Using CppUnit with QtCreator.

Last updated on Sep 18, 2022 4 min read

We have been using CppUnit for many years and have a large set of tests in CppUnit and so wanted to continue using the CppUnit framework while using QtCreator as the IDE. QtCreator has a plugin for using the Qt test framework but changing test framework would be a lot of work.

The basic goals were

  • automatically run tests when the code is built
  • Have test failures show up in the Issues window of QtCreator 
  • Easily add new tests

Running the tests

This example is based on the Money example code from CppUnit. The MoneyTest file was renamed MoneyTestCase to match the conventions we use.

To use QtCreator with the money example, the first task was to create a simple qmake .pro file for the project

 TEMPLATE = app  
 TARGET = cppunit-test  
 INCLUDEPATH += .  
 HEADERS += Money.h \  
   MoneyTestCase.h  
 SOURCES += MoneyApp.cpp \  
   MoneyTestCase.cpp  
 LIBS += -lcppunit

This compiles and the tests can be run:

Starting /home/dibben/Develop/QtCreator/cppunit-test/cppunit-test...
....
OK (4)

But we want to run the tests automatically when they are built. So we add a custom process step.

Now when we type “Ctrl+B” to build the project the tests are automatically run.

Getting the test failures

When using the default outputter, if a test fails, we get a message such as:

..F..
MoneyTestCase.cpp:52:Assertion
Test name: MoneyTestCase::testEqual
assertion failed
- Expression: money123USD != money123FF
Failures !!!
Run: 4   Failure total: 1   Failures: 1   Errors: 0

But we want this to appear in the Issues list of QtCreator with a link to the test that failed.

To do this we need to change the output format of CppUnit. This requires changing the MoneyApp.cpp code to use the basic test runner and adding a new outputter. The main function now looks like this:

  CPPUNIT_NS::TestResult controller;  
  // Add a listener that colllects test result  
  CPPUNIT_NS::TestResultCollector result;  
  controller.addListener( &result );  
  // Add a listener that print dots as test run.  
  CPPUNIT_NS::BriefTestProgressListener progress;  
  controller.addListener( &progress );  
  // Add the top suite to the test runner  
  CPPUNIT_NS::TestRunner runner;  
  runner.run( controller );  
  runner.addTest( suite );  
  // Run the test.  
  runner.run(controller);  
  bool wasSucessful = result.wasSuccessful();  
  // Print test in a compiler compatible format.  
  #ifndef _WIN32  
      GccOutputter outputter( &result, std::cerr );  
  #else  
      MSVCOutputter outputter( &result, std::cout );  
  #endif  
  outputter.write();

This will collect the results in the result object and then print them at the end of the run using either the GccOutputter or MSVCOutputter. These are modified versions of the Compiler outputter that produce output that QtCreator can interpret. Building this will now produce the following output in the Compile window

 18:57:46: Starting: "/home/dibben/Develop/QtCreator/cppunit-test/cppunit-test"  
 MoneyTestCase::testConstructor : OK  
 MoneyTestCase::testEqual : assertion  
 MoneyTestCase::testAdd : OK  
 MoneyTestCase::testAddThrow : OK  
 MoneyTestCase.cpp:52: error: - Expression: money123USD != money123FF  
 Failures !!!  
 Run: 4  Failure total: 1  Failures: 1  Errors: 0  
 18:57:46: The process "/home/dibben/Develop/QtCreator/cppunit-test/cppunit-test" exited with code 1.

and QtCreator will pick up the error and display it in the Issues output pane:

So now when the code is built the tests will be run automatically and any errors will show up in the Issues pane linked to the source line for the failed test.

The code GccOutputter and MSVCOutputter is available on Github here.

Adding a new test

The money example uses a separate header and source file for the test cases. This means that to add a new test we need to do 3 things

  1. Add a declaration in the header
  2. Add a definition in the source file
  3. Add the test to the test suite using the CPPUNIT_TEST macro.

Some of the newer frameworks make this easier but we are using CppUnit. To make this simple in QtCreator I created a plugin that adds some support functions for Cppunit. The plugin is available on Github

With the plugin creating a new test is as simple as Ctrl+Shift+T, then a dialog appears for the name of the new test. Multiple tests can be entered separated by spaces. On clicking OK this does the 3 steps above to add the test to both the header and the source file.

The plugin has some other functions as well

  • Create new tests
  • Create a new test case class (custom class wizard)
  • Switch between source and test case

References

David Dibben
David Dibben
Software developer of electromagnetic simulation systems