1 Google C++ Testing Framework
2 ============================
4 http://code.google.com/p/googletest/
9 Google's framework for writing C++ tests on a variety of platforms
10 (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Windows CE, Symbian, etc). Based on the
11 xUnit architecture. Supports automatic test discovery, a rich set of
12 assertions, user-defined assertions, death tests, fatal and non-fatal
13 failures, various options for running the tests, and XML test report
16 Please see the project page above for more information as well as the
17 mailing list for questions, discussions, and development. There is
18 also an IRC channel on OFTC (irc.oftc.net) #gtest available. Please
21 Requirements for End Users
22 --------------------------
24 Google Test is designed to have fairly minimal requirements to build
25 and use with your projects, but there are some. Currently, we support
26 Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, and Cygwin. We will also make our best
27 effort to support other platforms (e.g. Solaris, AIX, and z/OS).
28 However, since core members of the Google Test project have no access
29 to these platforms, Google Test may have outstanding issues there. If
30 you notice any problems on your platform, please notify
31 googletestframework@googlegroups.com. Patches for fixing them are
34 ### Linux Requirements ###
36 These are the base requirements to build and use Google Test from a source
37 package (as described below):
38 * GNU-compatible Make or gmake
39 * POSIX-standard shell
40 * POSIX(-2) Regular Expressions (regex.h)
41 * A C++98-standard-compliant compiler
43 ### Windows Requirements ###
45 * Microsoft Visual C++ 7.1 or newer
47 ### Cygwin Requirements ###
49 * Cygwin 1.5.25-14 or newer
51 ### Mac OS X Requirements ###
53 * Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger or newer
54 * Developer Tools Installed
56 Also, you'll need CMake 2.6.4 or higher if you want to build the
57 samples using the provided CMake script, regardless of the platform.
59 Requirements for Contributors
60 -----------------------------
62 We welcome patches. If you plan to contribute a patch, you need to
63 build Google Test and its own tests from an SVN checkout (described
64 below), which has further requirements:
66 * Python version 2.3 or newer (for running some of the tests and
67 re-generating certain source files from templates)
68 * CMake 2.6.4 or newer
73 There are two primary ways of getting Google Test's source code: you
74 can download a stable source release in your preferred archive format,
75 or directly check out the source from our Subversion (SVN) repositary.
76 The SVN checkout requires a few extra steps and some extra software
77 packages on your system, but lets you track the latest development and
78 make patches much more easily, so we highly encourage it.
80 ### Source Package ###
82 Google Test is released in versioned source packages which can be
83 downloaded from the download page [1]. Several different archive
84 formats are provided, but the only difference is the tools used to
85 manipulate them, and the size of the resulting file. Download
86 whichever you are most comfortable with.
88 [1] http://code.google.com/p/googletest/downloads/list
90 Once the package is downloaded, expand it using whichever tools you
91 prefer for that type. This will result in a new directory with the
92 name "gtest-X.Y.Z" which contains all of the source code. Here are
93 some examples on Linux:
95 tar -xvzf gtest-X.Y.Z.tar.gz
96 tar -xvjf gtest-X.Y.Z.tar.bz2
101 To check out the main branch (also known as the "trunk") of Google
102 Test, run the following Subversion command:
104 svn checkout http://googletest.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ gtest-svn
109 To build Google Test and your tests that use it, you need to tell your
110 build system where to find its headers and source files. The exact
111 way to do it depends on which build system you use, and is usually
114 ### Generic Build Instructions ###
116 Suppose you put Google Test in directory ${GTEST_DIR}. To build it,
117 create a library build target (or a project as called by Visual Studio
118 and Xcode) to compile
120 ${GTEST_DIR}/src/gtest-all.cc
124 ${GTEST_DIR}/include and ${GTEST_DIR}
126 in the header search path. Assuming a Linux-like system and gcc,
127 something like the following will do:
129 g++ -I${GTEST_DIR}/include -I${GTEST_DIR} -c ${GTEST_DIR}/src/gtest-all.cc
130 ar -rv libgtest.a gtest-all.o
132 Next, you should compile your test source file with
133 ${GTEST_DIR}/include in the header search path, and link it with gtest
134 and any other necessary libraries:
136 g++ -I${GTEST_DIR}/include path/to/your_test.cc libgtest.a -o your_test
138 As an example, the make/ directory contains a Makefile that you can
139 use to build Google Test on systems where GNU make is available
140 (e.g. Linux, Mac OS X, and Cygwin). It doesn't try to build Google
141 Test's own tests. Instead, it just builds the Google Test library and
142 a sample test. You can use it as a starting point for your own build
145 If the default settings are correct for your environment, the
146 following commands should succeed:
152 If you see errors, try to tweak the contents of make/Makefile to make
153 them go away. There are instructions in make/Makefile on how to do
158 Google Test comes with a CMake build script (CMakeLists.txt) that can
159 be used on a wide range of platforms ("C" stands for cross-platofrm.).
160 If you don't have CMake installed already, you can download it for
161 free from http://www.cmake.org/.
163 CMake works by generating native makefiles or build projects that can
164 be used in the compiler environment of your choice. The typical
165 workflow starts with:
167 mkdir mybuild # Create a directory to hold the build output.
169 cmake ${GTEST_DIR} # Generate native build scripts.
171 If you want to build Google Test's samples, you should replace the
174 cmake -Dgtest_build_samples=ON ${GTEST_DIR}
176 If you are on a *nix system, you should now see a Makefile in the
177 current directory. Just type 'make' to build gtest.
179 If you use Windows and have Vistual Studio installed, a gtest.sln file
180 and several .vcproj files will be created. You can then build them
183 On Mac OS X with Xcode installed, a .xcodeproj file will be generated.
185 ### Legacy Build Scripts ###
187 Before settling on CMake, we have been providing hand-maintained build
188 projects/scripts for Visual Studio, Xcode, and Autotools. While we
189 continue to provide them for convenience, they are not actively
190 maintained any more. We highly recommend that you follow the
191 instructions in the previous two sections to integrate Google Test
192 with your existing build system.
194 If you still need to use the legacy build scripts, here's how:
196 The msvc\ folder contains two solutions with Visual C++ projects.
197 Open the gtest.sln or gtest-md.sln file using Visual Studio, and you
198 are ready to build Google Test the same way you build any Visual
199 Studio project. Files that have names ending with -md use DLL
200 versions of Microsoft runtime libraries (the /MD or the /MDd compiler
201 option). Files without that suffix use static versions of the runtime
202 libraries (the /MT or the /MTd option). Please note that one must use
203 the same option to compile both gtest and the test code. If you use
204 Visual Studio 2005 or above, we recommend the -md version as /MD is
205 the default for new projects in these versions of Visual Studio.
207 On Mac OS X, open the gtest.xcodeproj in the xcode/ folder using
208 Xcode. Build the "gtest" target. The universal binary framework will
209 end up in your selected build directory (selected in the Xcode
210 "Preferences..." -> "Building" pane and defaults to xcode/build).
211 Alternatively, at the command line, enter:
215 This will build the "Release" configuration of gtest.framework in your
216 default build location. See the "xcodebuild" man page for more
217 information about building different configurations and building in
223 Google Test can be used in diverse environments. The default
224 configuration may not work (or may not work well) out of the box in
225 some environments. However, you can easily tweak Google Test by
226 defining control macros on the compiler command line. Generally,
227 these macros are named like GTEST_XYZ and you define them to either 1
228 or 0 to enable or disable a certain feature.
230 We list the most frequently used macros below. For a complete list,
231 see file include/gtest/internal/gtest-port.h.
233 ### Choosing a TR1 Tuple Library ###
235 Some Google Test features require the C++ Technical Report 1 (TR1)
236 tuple library, which is not yet available with all compilers. The
237 good news is that Google Test implements a subset of TR1 tuple that's
238 enough for its own need, and will automatically use this when the
239 compiler doesn't provide TR1 tuple.
241 Usually you don't need to care about which tuple library Google Test
242 uses. However, if your project already uses TR1 tuple, you need to
243 tell Google Test to use the same TR1 tuple library the rest of your
244 project uses, or the two tuple implementations will clash. To do
247 -DGTEST_USE_OWN_TR1_TUPLE=0
249 to the compiler flags while compiling Google Test and your tests. If
250 you want to force Google Test to use its own tuple library, just add
252 -DGTEST_USE_OWN_TR1_TUPLE=1
254 to the compiler flags instead.
256 If you don't want Google Test to use tuple at all, add
258 -DGTEST_HAS_TR1_TUPLE=0
260 and all features using tuple will be disabled.
262 ### Multi-threaded Tests ###
264 Google Test is thread-safe where the pthread library is available.
265 After #include "gtest/gtest.h", you can check the GTEST_IS_THREADSAFE
266 macro to see whether this is the case (yes if the macro is #defined to
267 1, no if it's undefined.).
269 If Google Test doesn't correctly detect whether pthread is available
270 in your environment, you can force it with
272 -DGTEST_HAS_PTHREAD=1
276 -DGTEST_HAS_PTHREAD=0
278 When Google Test uses pthread, you may need to add flags to your
279 compiler and/or linker to select the pthread library, or you'll get
280 link errors. If you use the CMake script or the deprecated Autotools
281 script, this is taken care of for you. If you use your own build
282 script, you'll need to read your compiler and linker's manual to
283 figure out what flags to add.
285 ### As a Shared Library (DLL) ###
287 Google Test is compact, so most users can build and link it as a
288 static library for the simplicity. You can choose to use Google Test
289 as a shared library (known as a DLL on Windows) if you prefer.
291 To compile *gtest* as a shared library, add
293 -DGTEST_CREATE_SHARED_LIBRARY=1
295 to the compiler flags. You'll also need to tell the linker to produce
296 a shared library instead - consult your linker's manual for how to do
299 To compile your *tests* that use the gtest shared library, add
301 -DGTEST_LINKED_AS_SHARED_LIBRARY=1
303 to the compiler flags.
305 Note: while the above steps aren't technically necessary today when
306 using some compilers (e.g. GCC), they may become necessary in the
307 future, if we decide to improve the speed of loading the library (see
308 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Visibility for details). Therefore you are
309 recommended to always add the above flags when using Google Test as a
310 shared library. Otherwise a future release of Google Test may break
313 ### Avoiding Macro Name Clashes ###
315 In C++, macros don't obey namespaces. Therefore two libraries that
316 both define a macro of the same name will clash if you #include both
317 definitions. In case a Google Test macro clashes with another
318 library, you can force Google Test to rename its macro to avoid the
321 Specifically, if both Google Test and some other code define macro
324 -DGTEST_DONT_DEFINE_FOO=1
326 to the compiler flags to tell Google Test to change the macro's name
327 from FOO to GTEST_FOO. Currently FOO can be FAIL, SUCCEED, or TEST.
328 For example, with -DGTEST_DONT_DEFINE_TEST=1, you'll need to write
330 GTEST_TEST(SomeTest, DoesThis) { ... }
334 TEST(SomeTest, DoesThis) { ... }
336 in order to define a test.
338 Upgrating from an Earlier Version
339 ---------------------------------
341 We strive to keep Google Test releases backward compatible.
342 Sometimes, though, we have to make some breaking changes for the
343 users' long-term benefits. This section describes what you'll need to
344 do if you are upgrading from an earlier version of Google Test.
346 ### Upgrading from 1.3.0 or Earlier ###
348 You may need to explicitly enable or disable Google Test's own TR1
349 tuple library. See the instructions in section "Choosing a TR1 Tuple
352 ### Upgrading from 1.4.0 or Earlier ###
354 The Autotools build script (configure + make) is no longer officially
355 supportted. You are encouraged to migrate to your own build system or
356 use CMake. If you still need to use Autotools, you can find
357 instructions in the README file from Google Test 1.4.0.
359 On platforms where the pthread library is available, Google Test uses
360 it in order to be thread-safe. See the "Multi-threaded Tests" section
361 for what this means to your build script.
363 If you use Microsoft Visual C++ 7.1 with exceptions disabled, Google
364 Test will no longer compile. This should affect very few people, as a
365 large portion of STL (including <string>) doesn't compile in this mode
366 anyway. We decided to stop supporting it in order to greatly simplify
367 Google Test's implementation.
369 Developing Google Test
370 ----------------------
372 This section discusses how to make your own changes to Google Test.
374 ### Testing Google Test Itself ###
376 To make sure your changes work as intended and don't break existing
377 functionality, you'll want to compile and run Google Test's own tests.
378 For that you can use CMake:
382 cmake -Dgtest_build_tests=ON ${GTEST_DIR}
384 Make sure you have Python installed, as some of Google Test's tests
385 are written in Python. If the cmake command complains about not being
386 able to find Python ("Could NOT find PythonInterp (missing:
387 PYTHON_EXECUTABLE)"), try telling it explicitly where your Python
388 executable can be found:
390 cmake -DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE=path/to/python -Dgtest_build_tests=ON ${GTEST_DIR}
392 Next, you can build Google Test and all of its own tests. On *nix,
393 this is usually done by 'make'. To run the tests, do
397 All tests should pass.
399 ### Regenerating Source Files ###
401 Some of Google Test's source files are generated from templates (not
402 in the C++ sense) using a script. A template file is named FOO.pump,
403 where FOO is the name of the file it will generate. For example, the
404 file include/gtest/internal/gtest-type-util.h.pump is used to generate
405 gtest-type-util.h in the same directory.
407 Normally you don't need to worry about regenerating the source files,
408 unless you need to modify them. In that case, you should modify the
409 corresponding .pump files instead and run the pump.py Python script to
410 regenerate them. You can find pump.py in the scripts/ directory.
411 Read the Pump manual [2] for how to use it.
413 [2] http://code.google.com/p/googletest/wiki/PumpManual
415 ### Contributing a Patch ###
417 We welcome patches. Please read the Google Test developer's guide [3]
418 for how you can contribute. In particular, make sure you have signed
419 the Contributor License Agreement, or we won't be able to accept the
422 [3] http://code.google.com/p/googletest/wiki/GoogleTestDevGuide