CuTest

CuTest is a lightweight unit testing framework for the C programming language, following the xUnit architecture and drawing strong inspiration from GoogleTest.

C is not a subset of C++, and nontrivial C headers typically will not compile cleanly in C++ environments.
While C++ testing frameworks may offer a smoother developer experience, applying them to C code often feels like forcing a square peg into a round hole.

CuTest is purpose-built for modern C, providing functionality and ease of use comparable to GoogleTest, but without sacrificing C compatibility.

CuTest requires a C23 transpiler or a ISO/IEC 9899:2024 compliant compiler.

Features

• xUnit test framework: CuTest is based on the xUnit testing framework, a popular architecture for unit testing
• Test discovery: CuTest automatically discovers and runs your tests, eliminating the need to manually register your tests
• Various options for running tests: CuTest provides many options for running tests including running individual tests.

Get started with CMake

CuTest includes a CMake build script that works across a wide range of platforms.

Start by creating a directory for your project:

mkdir my_project
cd my_project

Then, create a file named hello_test.c in the project directory with the following content:

#include <buracchi/cutest/cutest.h>

// Demonstrate some basic assertions.
TEST(hello_test, basic_assertions) {
  // Expect two strings not to be equal.
  EXPECT_STRNE("hello", "world");
  // Expect equality.
  EXPECT_EQ(7 * 6, 42);
}

Next, create a CMakeLists.txt file in the same directory to declare a dependency on CuTest and compile the source file into an executable. There are many ways to do so, but we will use CMake’s FetchContent module in this example:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.31)
project(my_project)

set(CMAKE_C_STANDARD 23)

include(FetchContent)
FetchContent_Declare(
        buracchi-cutest 
        GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/buracchi/cutest.git 
        GIT_TAG        main # use the latest commit hash for production code
)
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(buracchi-cutest)

add_executable(hello_test "hello_test.c")
target_link_libraries(hello_test buracchi::cutest::cutest_main)

cutest_discover_tests(hello_test)

You can now build and run the test with:

cmake -S . -B build && cmake --build build && cd build && ctest

Documentation

For a further overview of CuTest, refer to the introduction in the documentation folder.