Introduction

cfix is a framework for authoring and running xUnit-like test cases written in C or C++. The aim of the tool is to provide a development experience very similar to frameworks such as JUnit or NUnit. Due to the nature of C and C++, current unit testing frameworks for C and C++ hardly reach the ease of use of JUnit or NUnit. In particular, it is notable that significantly more code has to be written to implement a test suite.

Languages like Java and the various .Net languages, as well as scripting languages, all provide reflection facilities. Unit testing frameworks for these languages can therefore rely on reflective features in order to minimize the amount of code required to define a test suite. Provided a library, the framework can find and identify test cases and is able to selectively run them.

Lacking similar reflective facilities, the route most unit testing frameworks for C and C++ have chosen is to oblige the developer to explicitly define test cases and fixtures. Taking CUnit as an example, the developer has to make explicit function calls to define a test suite, add test cases to the suite and to finally run this suite. CppUnit simplifies this a bit, but still requires the developer to implement quite some amount of initialization code. Another important drawback of this approach is the fact that no real separation between test code and test runner is done. Often, even the choice whether to use a graphical or a console front end for running test is tied to this initialization code.

Based on this observation, it is clearly desirable to minimize the amount of boilerplate code the developer has to write. Furthermore, a separation (in terms of artifacts, i.e. binaries) between the code to be tested and the test runner application is crucial.