Use case for TEST_INCLUDE_FILES directory property?

Code
1

What is the intended use case for the TEST_INCLUDE_FILES directory property?

The docs say:

A list of cmake files that will be included when ctest is run. If you specify TEST_INCLUDE_FILES, those files will be included and processed when ctest is run on the directory.

Is this intended to allow you to run some setup tasks before ctest executes tests?

2

It allows you to execute arbitrary code at test time. But by test time, I don’t mean during a test case, I mean when ctest runs, specifically while it is reading the files to build up its picture of the set of defined tests.

One example use case is with gtest_discover_tests(). That command allows you to specify properties to set on test cases, but it can’t set a value that is a list, only single values. If you need to assign a list to some test property, you need to do that in a separate file, which you then add to ctest processing by listing that file in the TEST_INCLUDE_FILES property. The TEST_LIST keyword allows you to specify what variable to store the list of discovered tests in so that you can set properties on those tests.

CMakeLists.txt

gtest_discover_tests(SomeTarget TEST_LIST discovered_tests)
set_property(DIRECTORY APPEND PROPERTY
    TEST_INCLUDE_FILES ${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/add_labels.cmake
)

add_labels.cmake

set_tests_properties(${discovered_tests} PROPERTIES LABELS "One;Two;Three")
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3

Interesting. So in the files included by TEST_INCLUDE_FILES, the variables in that scope of CMake processing are available?

So, is CTest actually re-executing cmake configuration as it builds the test graph? I didn’t realize that.

4

No it is a completely separate processing environment. It is isolated from the CMake configure run. All you have access to is whatever is defined in the files ctest reads. Imagine it like a separate cmake -P invocation.

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5

I see. Thanks for the info!