Boost.Test fails to compile since 1.48 when Boost.Timer is included. I find that often I want to use timers when testing. I reported this back in 2012 along with a comprehensive patch that fixes the issue. On the eve of 1.55 I see the patch has still not been applied, despite an original agreement to do so. Unfortunately I don't have commit privileges so I am unable to do this myself. The original discussion from here: http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2012/09/196811.php went as follows:
On 25/09/12 18:14, Gennadiy Rozental wrote:
Jamie Allsop<ja11sop<at> yahoo.co.uk> writes:
These are patches we've been using for some time locally, the recent discussions highlighted the importance of pushing patches like these to a wider audience.
In summary the key changes are:
* https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/7410 * https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/7397
These are fine. I'll try to check it in on a weekend
Excellent thanks!
Yet https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/7397 was never applied. With changes to Boost.Test since then it is likely that the patch needs modified to be applied but that should not be too hard. Apart from that I'd like to see the suite of 4 patches applied as a whole. So far only https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/7410 has been applied but the patches address severe use-case short-comings in Boost.Test that make it viable for broader testing use. I've summaried them below. * https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/7397 * https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/7410 (applied) * https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/7417 (small) * https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/7419 (small) Original discussion that didn't really get very far was in these threads: * http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2012/09/196811.php * http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2012/09/196828.php For those who are interested I've pasted my original motivations from the year old thread below as a reminder. Basically the patches allow Boost.Test to: * compile with Boost.Timer (so not broken) * output test progress on the fly in a format other tools could parse * allows Boost.Test to be used for live test diagnostics in running systems in a 'test' mode Jamie * https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/7410 (applied) * all test cases/suites have file and line information captured so that external tools can use the Boost.Log output to create links into the source tree, answering questions like, "What is this test case?". It is possible to simply follow the link and see. * https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/7417 * update the Boost.Test log output to include summary status information when a test case or suite is completed. This includes the test status, assertions passed and total assertions. This allows live test status to be viewed and nicer tools to be built around this. For example each test can be shown starting, in progress and then complete with the resulting status in detail. I should note that Boost.Test reports currently output this additional test status but this is done only on *completion of all tests* and so *cannot* be used to show live progress. * this additional test status as part of the log can be easily captured using regular expressions if HRF is used and many IDEs will allow colourisation, autolinking and so on using similar approaches. * https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/7397 * update Boost.Test to use the new Boost.Timer classes introduced in Boost 1.48. This can be suppressed through the use of a macro should the old timers be preferred. The new Boost.Timer provides much better timing information than the old Boost.Timer library. You should refer to the library itself for an explanation of why the previous timer library was deprecated: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_51_0/libs/timer/doc/index.html * https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/7419 Essentially the patch does two things: * It allows boost::unit_test_framework::init() to be called more than once. The result is to reset the test status and master test suite so that new tests can be added and new reports generated through multiple calls. The CLA parsing is also reset. Recent changes to this code may make my call to clear() redundant. I'll let Gennadiy be the judge of that. * This first change then allows the framework setup and teardown to be encapsulated in a helper class (not provided in the patch but one could be). In our systems we use a helper class that exposes a simple API that allows the user to implement a method where test units can be added directly to the master test suite - see the ticket for an example. As I said the patch focuses solely on enabling the possibility of writing such a class, not the class itself. * It provides scoped Boost.Test arguments for the commandline when BOOST_TEST_USE_QUALIFIED_COMMANDLINE_ARGUMENTS is defined. All command line arguments are then called --boost.test.<argument> for example --boost.test.log_level instead of --log_level. This of course means that all Boost.Test related arguments will not clash with any program arguments. On its own this is a generally useful feature as it allows custom main() functions to pass arguments down to other components during simple unit testing.