Hi, I would like to know why Boost's unit test framework requires that the user defines init_unit_test_suite(int, char**) (or with char *[] argument???) instead of main(). I recently had again some trouble because of it: * It broke the general autoconf test in boost.m4 as the existance of a Boost library can normally easily be tested by using boost code in main() and not init_unit_test_suite(). (Will probably be fixed soon in boost.m4.) * According to http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2007/05/121601.php linkers don't look into libraries (either static or dynamic) to find main so that unit tests cannot be cimpiled as shared library. * I noticed that Debian's Boost library doesn't work for me as main() is not found in the shared library (but in the static one). I found now beside my bug report http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=456863 also http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=432921 which mainly refers to the link above. I'm not sure whether my problem is an error in Debian's packages or not but I ask why is main handled differently in Boost.test? Wouldn't it be sufficient to ask the user simple to start init_unit_test_suite() from a user specified main() to make most problems go away? Maybe it would be even OK to just start init_unit_test_suite() in the constructor of a static variable (yes, I know that the initialisation order may cause trouble with other static data). http://www.boost.org/libs/test/doc/faq.html doesn't explain it! I will now use ifdef's to easily allow using boost/test/included/unit_test.hpp as alternative to the library. Jens