path: root/README

Google C++ Testing Framework
============================
http://code.google.com/p/googletest/

Overview
--------
Google's framework for writing C++ tests on a variety of platforms (Linux, Mac
OS X, Windows, Windows CE, and Symbian). Based on the xUnit architecture.
Supports automatic test discovery, a rich set of assertions, user-defined
assertions, death tests, fatal and non-fatal failures, various options for
running the tests, and XML test report generation.

Please see the project page above for more information as well as mailing lists
for questions, discussions, and development. There is also an IRC channel on
OFTC (irc.oftc.net) #gtest available. Please join us!

Requirements
------------
Google Test is designed to have fairly minimal requirements to build and use
with your projects, but there are some. Currently, the only Operating System
(OS) on which Google Test is known to build properly is Linux, but we are
actively working on Windows and Mac support as well. The source code itself is
already portable across many other platforms, but we are still developing
robust build systems for each.

### Linux Requirements ###
These are the base requirements to build and use Google Test from a source
package (as described below):
  * GNU-compatible Make or "gmake"
  * POSIX-standard shell
  * POSIX(-2) Regular Expressions (regex.h)
  * A C++98 standards compliant compiler

Furthermore, if you are building Google Test from a VCS Checkout (also
described below), there are further requirements:
  * Automake version 1.9 or newer
  * Autoconf version 2.59 or newer
  * Libtool / Libtoolize
  * Python version 2.4 or newer

### Windows Requirements ###
  * Microsoft Visual Studio 7.1 or newer

### Cygwin Requirements ###
  * Cygwin 1.5.25-14 or newer

### Mac OS X Requirements ###
  * Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger or newer

Getting the Source
------------------
There are two primary ways of getting Google Test's source code: you can
download a source release in your preferred archive format, or directly check
out the source from a Version Control System (VCS, we use Google Code's
Subversion hosting). The VCS checkout requires a few extra steps and some extra
software packages on your system, but lets you track development, and make
patches to contribute much more easily, so we highly encourage it.

### VCS Checkout: ###
The first step is to select whether you want to check out the main line of
development on Google Test, or one of the released branches. The former will be
much more active and have the latest features, but the latter provides much
more stability and predictability. Choose whichever fits your needs best, and
proceed with the following Subversion commands:

  $ svn checkout http://googletest.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ gtest-svn

or for a release version X.Y.*'s branch:

  $ svn checkout http://googletest.googlecode.com/svn/branches/release-X.Y/ gtest-X.Y-svn

Next you will need to prepare the GNU Autotools build system, if you
are using Linux, Mac OS X, or Cygwin. Enter the target directory of
the checkout command you used ('gtest-svn' or 'gtest-X.Y-svn' above)
and proceed with the following commands:

  $ aclocal-1.9       # Where "1.9" must match the following automake command.
  $ libtoolize -c     # Use "glibtoolize -c" instead on Mac OS X.
  $ autoheader
  $ automake-1.9 -ac  # See Automake version requirements above.
  $ autoconf

While this is a bit complicated, it will most often be automatically re-run by
your "make" invocations, so in practice you shouldn't need to worry too much.
Once you have completed these steps, you are ready to build the library. 

### Source Package: ###
Google Test is also released in source packages which can be downloaded from
its Google Code download page[1]. Several different archive formats are
provided, but the only difference is the tools used to manipulate them, and the
size of the resulting file. Download whichever you are most comfortable with.

  [1] Google Test Downloads: http://code.google.com/p/googletest/downloads/list

Once downloaded expand the archive using whichever tools you prefer for that
type. This will always result in a new directory with the name "gtest-X.Y.Z"
which contains all of the source code. Here are some examples in Linux:

  $ tar -xvzf gtest-X.Y.Z.tar.gz
  $ tar -xvjf gtest-X.Y.Z.tar.bz2
  $ unzip gtest-X.Y.Z.zip

Building the Source
-------------------

### Linux, Mac OS X, and Cygwin ###
There are two primary options for building the source at this point: build it
inside the source code tree, or in a separate directory. We recommend building
in a separate directory as that tends to produce both more consistent results
and be easier to clean up should anything go wrong, but both patterns are
supported. The only hard restriction is that while the build directory can be
a subdirectory of the source directory, the opposite is not possible and will
result in errors. Once you have selected where you wish to build Google Test,
create the directory if necessary, and enter it. The following steps apply for
either approach by simply substituting the shell variable SRCDIR with "." for
building inside the source directory, and the relative path to the source
directory otherwise.

  $ ${SRCDIR}/configure  # Standard GNU configure script, --help for more info
  $ make  # Standard makefile following GNU conventions
  $ make check  # Builds and runs all tests - all should pass

Other programs will only be able to use Google Test's functionality if you
install it in a location which they can access, in Linux this is typically
under '/usr/local'. The following command will install all of the Google Test
libraries, public headers, and utilities necessary for other programs and
libraries to leverage it:

  $ sudo make install  # Not necessary, but allows use by other programs

TODO(chandlerc@google.com): This section needs to be expanded when the
'gtest-config' script is finished and Autoconf macro's are provided (or not
provided) in order to properly reflect the process for other programs to
locate, include, and link against Google Test.

Finally, should you need to remove Google Test from your system after having
installed it, run the following command, and it will back out its changes.
However, note carefully that you must run this command on the *same* Google
Test build that you ran the install from, or the results are not predictable.
If you install Google Test on your system, and are working from a VCS checkout,
make sure you run this *before* updating your checkout of the source in order
to uninstall the same version which you installed.

  $ sudo make uninstall  # Must be run against the exact same build as "install"

### Windows ###
Open the gtest.sln file in the msvc/ folder using Visual Studio, and
you are ready to build Google Test the same way you build any Visual
Studio project.

Happy testing!