Testing by C++ template metaprograms

Acta Univ. Sapientiae Informatica, vol. 2 no. 2 (2010) 154-167 Testing is one of the most indispensable tasks in software engineering. The role of testing in software development has grown significantly because testing is able to reveal defects in the code in an early stage of development. Many unit test frameworks compatible with C/C++ code exist, but a standard one is missing. Unfortunately, many unsolved problems can be mentioned with the existing methods, for example usually external tools are necessary for testing C++ programs. In this paper we present a new approach for testing C++ programs. Our solution is based on C++ template metaprogramming facilities, so it can work with the standard-compliant compilers. The metaprogramming approach ensures that the overhead of testing is minimal at runtime. This approach also supports that the specification language can be customized among other advantages. Nevertheless, the only necessary tool is the compiler itself.