Unit Test Frameworks

Chapter 7. CppUnit

Overview

CppUnit is a port of JUnit to C++, and was originally authored by Michael Feathers and Jerome Lacoste. Its basic architecture and usage closely follow the xUnit model. The implementation details differ from JUnit as a result of design choices by CppUnit’s developers and language differences between Java and C++. CppUnit’s implementation makes full use of advanced C++ language features, including templates, abstract classes, nested classes, and the Standard Template Library (STL) It also makes extensive use of C macros, which some consider inelegant and error-prone, but are definitely useful here. CppUnit is designed to be thread-safe.

CppUnit is open source software released under the GNU Lesser General Public License. This license makes the code free for use, modification, and redistribution. For details, refer to http://www.gnu.org.

The CppUnit project is based at http://cppunit.sourceforge.net. The information given here is for CppUnit Version 1.8.0.

Architecture

CppUnit contains 24 ordinary classes, 4 abstract classes, 7 template classes, and several nested classes and helper macros. Everything belongs to the namespace “CppUnit” or one of its subordinate namespaces. The CppUnit namespaces are shown in Figure 7-1.

Figure 7-1. The CppUnit namespaces

Most of the code belongs to the main namespace, "CppUnit.” The namespace "Asserter” contains assertion functions ...