build-systems.md

Build systems

The latest released version of doctest can be obtained from here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/doctest/doctest/master/doctest/doctest.h

You can substitute master with dev or a tag like v1.4.8 for a specific version in the URL above.

CMake

• doctest is easiest to use as a single file inside your own repository. Then the following minimal example will work:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.0)
project(cmake_test VERSION 0.0.1 LANGUAGES CXX)

# Prepare doctest for other targets to use
find_package(doctest REQUIRED)

# Make test executable
add_executable(tests main.cpp)
target_compile_features(test PRIVATE cxx_std_17)
target_link_libraries(test PRIVATE doctest::doctest)

• You can also use the following CMake snippet to automatically fetch the entire doctest repository from github and configure it as an external project:

include(ExternalProject)
find_package(Git REQUIRED)

ExternalProject_Add(
    doctest
    PREFIX ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/doctest
    GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/doctest/doctest.git
    TIMEOUT 10
    UPDATE_COMMAND ${GIT_EXECUTABLE} pull
    CONFIGURE_COMMAND ""
    BUILD_COMMAND ""
    INSTALL_COMMAND ""
    LOG_DOWNLOAD ON
)

# Expose required variable (DOCTEST_INCLUDE_DIR) to parent scope
ExternalProject_Get_Property(doctest source_dir)
set(DOCTEST_INCLUDE_DIR ${source_dir}/doctest CACHE INTERNAL "Path to include folder for doctest")

And later you'll be able to use the doctest include directory like this:

# add it globally
include_directories(${DOCTEST_INCLUDE_DIR})

# or per target
target_include_directories(my_target PUBLIC ${DOCTEST_INCLUDE_DIR})

• If you have the entire doctest repository available (as a submodule or just as files) you could also include it in your CMake build by using add_subdirectory(path/to/doctest) and then you could use it like this:

add_executable(my_tests src_1.cpp src_2.cpp ...)
target_link_libraries(my_tests doctest)

• The CMakeLists.txt file of the doctest repository has install() commands so you could also use doctest as a package.

• To discover tests from an executable and register them in ctest you could use doctest_discover_tests(<target>) from scripts/cmake/doctest.cmake - read the comments in the file on how to use it. It works just like the same functionality in Catch.

Package managers

doctest is available through the following package managers:

• vcpkg

  • You can download and install doctest using the vcpkg dependency manager:

      git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg.git
      cd vcpkg
      ./bootstrap-vcpkg.sh #.\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat(for windows)
      ./vcpkg integrate install
      ./vcpkg install doctest

    The doctest port in vcpkg is kept up to date by Microsoft team members and community contributors. If the version is out of date, please create an issue or pull request on the vcpkg repository.

• hunter

• conan

  • https://conan.io/center/doctest
  • https://github.com/conan-io/conan-center-index/tree/master/recipes/doctest

• Homebrew (brew install doctest)

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