Unit Testing with CppUnit

For the past few days I've been reading the code for Polyworld and figuring out where to make my code additions. Today, I'm at a stage where I know where to make my code additions but I'd like to have a unit testing framework in place.

I reread Exploring the C++ Unit Testing Framework Jungle by Noel Llopis who suggested the following frameworks:

• CppUnit
  
• Boost.Test
• CppUnitLite
• CxxTest

I've used CppUnitLite and CxxTest previously but it's been a while and I've forgotten how to use them. I decided not to use CxxTest because I don't want to use Perl for the moment. I decided not to CppUnitLite because I don't want to work on extending the framework for the moment. I decided not to use Boost.Test because I don't want to use Boost for the moment.

That left me with CppUnit

As I was looking around, I also had a look at:

• Unit Testing Integration by Jeff who uses UnitTest++.
  
  
• Automated Tests and Continuous Integration in Game Projects by Dag Frommhold and Fabian Röken which more of a theoretical article.
  

I downloaded and installed CppUnit 1.12.1 from sourceforge and had a look at the documentation. Things were a bit scary so I had a look around for some tutorials and found these:

• Unit-tests with C++ using the framework CppUnit by Alexander Müller
  
  
• Getting Started with CppUnit in Ubuntu by Larry Hosken
  
  I thought I'd cut and paste this basic command from Hosken so I'd remember it.
  
  g++ -g CritterTest.cpp main.cc -lcppunit
  

Müller's example program did not work so I tried Hosken's example program which also did not work. I then removed CppUnit and installed an Ubuntu CppUnit package. Once I did that, both Müller's and Hosken's example programs worked.

Here a few other links I found interesting as I was looking around:

• The heart of TDD by Will Stott demonstrates usage of CppUnitLite.
  
  
• Test Driven Development in C/C++ by Dr. Robert S. Koss and Jeff Langr at Dr. Dobbs. Dr. Dobbs is always cool.
  
  
• Working Effectively With Legacy Code by Michael Feathers is a great looking book that uses CppUnitLite.
  

Now all I have to do is figure out some simple ways to avoid the overhead of creating objects that I want to test.