C++ Test Runner

A build-system agnostic CLI tool that finds and executes all GoogleTest and Catch2 tests in a directory.

Features

• Automatically finds all test executables
• Runs tests in parallel by default
• Supports generating a launch.json file for debugging in VSCode and Neovim (using nvim-dap)
• Has an interactive mode where you can fuzzy-find tests

Usage

For all options, use --help to print the help text.

Finding and executing all tests

To find and execute all individual tests in the current directory, simply use the run subcommand.

cpp_test_runner run

Listing all tests

To list all the tests in the current directory, simply use the list subcommand.

cpp_test_runner list

By default, this will output a Json object with all the tests that were found. Json was chosen as a default since it is an easy format to use by other programs for scripting.

If you want a pretty-printed json, you can use --output=pretty-json, or pipe the program's output through jq. You can also use --output=plain to have a newline-separated list of all the tests.

Generating a launch.json

Generating a launch.json through cpp_test_runner file can be an easy way to be able to debug individual tests in your text editor, granted it supports it. To do so, use the launch-json subcommand, and possibly redirect its output to .vscode/launch.json.

cpp_test_runner launch-json

Multiple options are available in order to modify how the launch.json file is generated, like --stop-at-entry to stop the program in the main function, and --pretty-printing to enable pretty-printing. Use --help to see all available options.

Specifying a test directory

To specify a test directory, use the --test-dir option. The test directory will be used as the root of the search for all the test executables. If an absolute path is used, it will be used as-is, but if a relative path is used, the program will look up in parent directories until the test directory is found. This way, the test-directory will can be found even if the cli is being used in a directory sibling to the test directory.

cpp_test_runner <run|list|launch-json> --test-dir <TEST-DIR>

Filtering tests

To filter tests by their name, you can use the --filter option.

cpp_test_runner <run|list|launch-json> --filter <REGEX>

Fuzzy-finding tests

To interactively fuzzy-find tests by their name, use the --interactive flag.

cpp_test_runner <run|list|launch-json> --interactive

This flag uses skim internally. If you are familiar with fzf, you should feel right at home using this flag.

Treating executables as single tests

If you don't want the tool to parse individual tests inside the executables, you can use the you can use the --executables-only flag.

cpp_test_runner <run|list|launch-json> --executables-only

Setting custom flags

To set custom flags when running the executables, the flags --gtest-extra-args and --catch2-extra-args can be used. For example:

cpp_test_runner <run|list|launch-json> --gtest-extra-args="--gtest_repeat=10,--gtest_shuffle" --catch2-extra-args="--durations"