I want to use CMake to mimic the behavior of a testing workflow that uses make check (as generated by Autotools).
Let’s say I have two libraries, A and B, where B depends on A. If I run make check from the binary directory of A, it should build the unit tests for A and then run them. If I run make check from the binary directory of B, it should build the unit tests for B and run them. But if I run make check from a parent binary directory that contains both A and B, I want it to detect that B depends on A, build and run A’s unit tests, and then build and run B’s unit tests.
I’ve run into a handful of issues replicating this workflow, and I could use some advice.
I can create a custom target check in my top-level CMakeLists.txt that depends on my project’s test executables and give it a command to run ctest. The resulting target, however, can only be run from the top level of the binary tree corresponding to its source location. I can’t access the target if I descend any further into the binary tree. Further, if I invoke it from the top of the binary tree, it will trigger ALL the test targets to build and then run ALL those test targets rather than going package-by-package.
I could achieve the package-by-package movement behavior with separate custom targets in each package, but that still doesn’t let me run make check from wherever I want in the binary tree the same way I could with ctest. CTest’s build-and-test mode might do what I need, but the docs imply that I wouldn’t get the package-by-package behavior I want. Same goes for workflow presets. It’d be ideal if there were a ctest option that told it to build the tests before running them, but I see no such option.
I feel like the solution is obvious but I’ve been staring at the problem for too long, so I could use advice on the best way to proceed. Are there CTest options I don’t know about? Is build-and-test mode the way to go? Generator expressions that would help? Something to do with the make test target? Anything is helpful.