Testing the project

Tl;dr

$ ctest --test-dir ./build-dir

Similar to the build step, this step is straightforward as the option above shows. Here are also a few tips:

Using presets

Similar to the buildPreset you often have testPreset that you can execute as:

$ ctest --preset default

You can find a list of them using:

$ cmake --list-preset=test

Listing the tests

You can list tests instead of running them by passing the -N flag

$ ctest --test-dir ./build-dir -N

The tests are often grouped by labels, which you can list using --print-labels

$ ctest --test-dir ./build-dir --print-labels

These can be combined with filter tests, to show what tests would be executed.

Note

Some testing backends like catch might not have the list of tests available straightaway, but they should be available after the build stage.

Filter tests

You have two main methods of filtering tests, by the name using -R/-E, or by the label -L/-LE. These are parsed as regex that include/exclude the tests with name or label that match the regex. So for example, if you want to run only unit tests, this might look like:

$ ctest --test-dir ./build-dir -L "^unit$"

Running in parallel

Use the -j option with the number of tests to be run in parallel, often times just $(nproc).

$ ctest --test-dir ./build-dir -j $(nproc)

Note

The parallelization of the tests themselves, e.g. due to MPI or OpenMP should be already handled by ctest when passing -j.

Alternatively, set the CTEST_PARALLEL_LEVEL environment variable.