CMake: setting an environmental variable for ctest (or otherwise getting failed test output from ctest/make test automatically)

Question

I want ctest to show me the failed tests output by default. That is, I want to run:

$ make all test 

and see any output of failed tests without having to cat Testing/Temporary/LastTest.log.

It appears that there are two ways of doing this:

(1) Setting the CTEST_OUTPUT_ON_FAILURE environmental variable:

 $ CTEST_OUTPUT_ON_FAILURE=1 make all test  $ # or CTEST_OUTPUT_ON_FAILURE=1 ctest 

(2) Specifying the --output-on-failure flag to the ctest invocation:

 $ ctest --output-on-failure 

Is there a way to write a CMakeLists.txt file such that ctests dumps failed tests output by default on a normal "make all test" invocation WITHOUT resorting to exporting the environmental variable globally in the session or resorting to a custom target like make check (as described here)?

I am aware of the SET_TESTS_PROPERTIES() command, but trying it out like this:

CMAKE_MINIMUM_REQUIRED(VERSION 2.8) PROJECT(testenv CXX) ENABLE_TESTING() ADD_EXECUTABLE(hello hello.cpp) ADD_TEST(testhello hello)  # Following sets the environment variable for the shell in which the test # progoram 'hello' is run, but not the shell in which ctest is run SET_TESTS_PROPERTIES(testhello     PROPERTIES ENVIRONMENT "CTEST_OUTPUT_ON_FAILURE=1") 

and experimenting shows that the environmental variable is set in the shell that the test program is executed in, but not in the shell that ctest is executed in.

Answer 1

The built-in test target cannot be modified, but you can add a custom check target which invokes ctest with the --output-on-failure switch in the following way:

if (CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES)     add_custom_target(check COMMAND ${CMAKE_CTEST_COMMAND}          --force-new-ctest-process --output-on-failure          --build-config "$<CONFIGURATION>") else()     add_custom_target(check COMMAND ${CMAKE_CTEST_COMMAND}          --force-new-ctest-process --output-on-failure) endif() 

The custom target has to be set up differently for single build type and multi-configuration builds. In the latter case, the active build configuration has to be passed on to the ctest invocation using the --build-config flag. The --force-new-ctest-process is used by the built-in test target by default.

Answer 2

There is now the list variable CMAKE_CTEST_ARGUMENTS in which you can set ctest arguments.

https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/variable/CMAKE_CTEST_ARGUMENTS.html