My company is adopting Test-Driven Development. I am wondering if any of you build engineers in a similar position have given any thought to how one might use this approach when developing your build systems.
In one sense, you can say, "Well, the build is the test. If I say 'go' and I end up with SuperProduct.exe (and maybe a bunch of unit test successes) then everything works and I don't need any tests." OTOH, it would be nice to gain some of the benefits of TDD (e.g., fearless refactoring) in the build system. Sometimes there are build artifacts that should be generated which are not code and therefore won't generate "build errors" (documentation perhaps). One approach I've thought of is a simple script that simply makes sure that each CMake project deposits an expected list of files in a certain place. I have a hierarchy of "buildables" so it might be nice to know that the header at the bottom of the dependency tree is built correctly, and that the libraries that use it find that header and build correctly, and that the executable that use those libraries find everything and build correctly. Does anyone do anything like this? Are there tools around to help? Is this a worthwhile thing to think about? Thanks, tyler _______________________________________________ Powered by www.kitware.com Visit other Kitware open-source projects at http://www.kitware.com/opensource/opensource.html Please keep messages on-topic and check the CMake FAQ at: http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_FAQ Follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe: http://www.cmake.org/mailman/listinfo/cmake
