Roadmap

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Planned features for future releases - order changes constantly...

For 1.2:

  • benchmarking
    • redo the compile time ones - also look into CATCH_CONFIG_FAST_COMPILE
    • add runtime benchmarks
  • mocking - interop with doctest (+ maybe send PRs with doctest integration info)
  • change docs a bit
    • mainly what is in the landing page (add link to overload)
    • update links to examples
    • write about static code analysis
    • docs about sort-of data driven testing - with INFO and SUBCASE
    • docs about decorators
      • test_suite
      • description
      • skip
      • may_fail - doesn't fail the test if any given assertion fails (but still reports it). This can be useful to flag a work-in-progress, or a known issue that you don't want to immediately fix but still want to track in the your tests.
      • should_fail - like [!mayfail] but fails the test if it passes. This can be useful if you want to be notified of accidental, or third-party, fixes.
      • expected_failures
      • timeout
    • https://www.paypal.me/onqtam
    • https://github.com/jch/html-pipeline/blob/master/lib/html/pipeline/sanitization_filter.rb#L45-L48
    • add a new page for build systems and integration
      • copying the header directly
      • getting the header with a cmake script - perhaps using ExternalProject() or something like that
      • using cmake directly
      • using it as a package (the install target)
      • getting it from vcpkg/hunter/etc.

For 1.3:

For 1.4:

  • running tests a few times
  • test execution in separate processes - fork() for UNIX and this for Windows
  • killing a test that exceeds a time limit (will perhaps require threading or processes)
  • symbolizer - for a stack trace - when an assertion fails - and it's in a user function with some deep callstack away from the current test case - how to know the exact code path that lead to the failing assert
  • ability to make the framework not capture unexpected exceptions - as requested here
  • add Approx ability to compare with absolute epsilon - Catch PR
  • ability to customize the colors in the console output (may also use styles - based on this)
  • implement breaking into the debugger under linux - see here and here
  • better testing of the library
    • unit test the String class
    • should unit test internals - currently even if a bug is caught by different output it's very difficult to track the reason
    • should test stuff that should not compile
    • should test crash handling
    • should test more config options
    • should test C++11 stuff - perhaps inspect the CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS for -std=c++11 on the CI and add more targets/tests
    • test tricky stuff like expressions with commas in asserts

For 2.0:

  • remove C++98 support
    • remove the config identifiers for C++11 features
    • use variadic templates where appropriate
    • update type lists to C++11
    • update traits - use declval, etc.
    • move initialization of fields from initializer lists to class bodies
    • update static code analysis - less warning suppressing

For 3.0:

  • use modules - use std::string and whatever else comes from the standard - no more hand rolled traits and classes
  • minimize the use of the preprocessor

Things that are being considered but not part of the roadmap yet:

  • consider the following 2 properties for the MSVC static code analyzer: EnableCppCoreCheck, EnableExperimentalCppCoreCheck
  • rpm package? like this: https://github.com/vietjtnguyen/argagg/blob/master/packaging/rpm/argagg.spec
  • get the current test case/section path - https://github.com/philsquared/Catch/issues/522
  • when no assertion is encountered in a test case it should fail
  • failure reporting should print out previous SECTIONs for data-driven testing - as requested here
  • Bitwise() class that has overloaded operators for comparison - to be used to check objects bitwise against each other
  • detect floating point exceptions
  • checkpoint/passpoint - like in boost test (also make all assert/subcase/logging macros to act as passpoints and print the last one on crashes or exceptions)
  • queries for the current test case - name (and probably decorators)
  • thread safety - asserts/subcases/captures should be safe to be used by multiple threads simultaneously
  • support for running tests in parallel in multiple threads
  • death tests - as in google test
  • config options
    • test case name uniqueness - reject the ones with identical names
  • command line options
    • ability to specify ASC/DESC for the order option
    • global timeout option (per test or per entire session?)
    • command line error handling/reporting
    • ability for the user to extend the command line - as requested here
    • option to list files in which there are test cases who match the current filters
    • option for filters to switch from "match any" to "match all" mode
    • option to list test suites and test cases in a tree view
    • add a "wait key" option - as requested here
  • decorators for test cases and test suites- like in boost test
    • depends_on
    • precondition
    • fixture
    • label (tag) - with the ability to have multiple labels (tags) for a test case and also the ability to list them
    • run X times (should also multiply with (or just override) the global test run times)
    • throw an exception when incompatible decorators are given in the same list of decorators - like may_fail and should_fail
  • setup / teardown support
    • global setup / teardown - can be currently achieved by providing a custom main function
    • per test suite (block? only? and not all blocks of the same test suite?)
    • as decorators
    • see how it's done in boost test - with the fixture decorator
    • perhaps for fixtures in addition to the constructor / destructor - since throwing in the destructor might terminate the program
    • or just ignore all of this this - it would require globals or classes and inheritance - and we already have subcases
  • doctest in a GUI environment? with no console? APIs for attaching a console? querying if there is one? investigate...
  • runtime performance
    • startup - the set holding all registered tests should use a specialized allocator to minimize program startup time
    • failing - optimize createStream/freeStream to reuse a pool of ostringstream objects
  • ability to provide a temp folder that is cleared between each test case
  • make the _MESSAGE assert macros work with variadic arguments - and maybe write the ones for binary/unary/fast asserts as well
  • move from operator "<<" to "<=" for capturing the left operand when decomposing binary expressions with templates
  • think about silencing warnings about unused variables when DOCTEST_CONFIG_DISABLE is used - see commit 6b61e8aa3818c5ea100cedc1bb48a60ea10df6e8 or issue #61
  • think about optionally using <typeinfo> and libcxxabi for demangling so users don't have to use TYPE_TO_STRING()

Things that are very unlikely to enter the roadmap:

  • think about counting failures added with FAIL() or ADD_FAIL_AT() as failed asserts
  • think about removing the binary asserts (leaving only the fast binary asserts) because normal asserts + no try/catch in asserts are almost the same
  • move the "react()" part (the one that throws for REQUIRE asserts - or for when "abort-after=" is reached) to a function call in the while() part of the asserts
  • stop using underscores for the begining of identifiers - the anonymous variables - against the standard...
  • templated fixture test cases
  • test with missed warning flags for GCC
  • utf8 / unicode ???
  • handle wchar strings???
  • hierarchical test suites - using a stack for the pushed ones
  • ability to specify the width of the terminal in terms of characters (for example 60 - less than 80 - the default)
  • ability to re-run only newly compiled tests based on time stamps using __DATE__ and __TIME__ - stored in some file
  • add underscores to all preprocessor identifiers not intended for use by the user
  • put everything from the detail namespace also in a nested anonymous namespace to make them with internal linkage
  • ability to put everything from doctest into an anonymous namespace - to allow the use of multiple different versions of doctest within the same binary (executable/dll) - like the stb libraries can

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