Turning off unittest execution of third-party code

Question

I'm trying to understand how the '-unittest' dmd switch can be used to select which files have their unittests executed.

I have a file, "a.d", containing a unittest block. File "a.d" imports from a third-party module (requiring the file "b1.d" and in turn "b2.d") which contain their own unittest blocks.

I don't want to run the tests in the third-party code: I just want to run the tests in a.d.

If I compile the third-party code first

dmd -c b1.d b2.d

then try to link it with my code with the unittests copied in

dmd -unittest a.d b1.o b2.o

then I get an error saying that the module in b1.d which a.d is trying to import is in a file that cannot be read.

Can anyone show me how to accomplish this?

Thanks!

Answer 1

What you want to do is not possible because a.d has imported b1.d and b2.d. It means that those modules must be passed to the compiler.

If you want to link some *.o files it's more complex: you have to write an interface (*.di file for them just like for a *.so) thus it's not a good idea to use this mechanism to bypass the unittests. (although this could work it's a bit heavy).

A more straightforward way to arbitrary select some unittests is to use the trait getUnitTests. It's really more the way to go.

Answer 2

You are almost there. Just use separate compilation and linking steps, i.e.

dmd -c -unittest a.d

and then:

dmd a.o b1.o b2.o

That's it.