Using CMake, how do I get verbose output from CTest?

I'm using CMake to build my project. I have added a unit test binary which is using the Boost unit testing framework. This one binary contains all of the unit tests. I've added that binary to be run by CTest:

ADD_EXECUTABLE( tftest test-main.cpp )
ENABLE_TESTING()
ADD_TEST( UnitTests tftest)

But the build output in Visual Studio only shows the result of running CTest:

      Start 1: UnitTests
  1/1 Test #1: UnitTests ................***Failed    0.05 sec

  0% tests passed, 1 tests failed out of 1

This is not very helpful, because I can't see which test failed. If I run ctest manually from the command line with --verbose I get the output from a Boost unit test which tells what actually failed:

1: Test command: tftest.exe
1: Test timeout computed to be: 9.99988e+006
1: Running 4 test cases...
1: test-main.cpp(20): error in "sanity_check3": check 1 == 2 failed
1:
1: *** 1 failure detected in test suite "Master Test Suite"
1/1 Test #1: UnitTests ................***Failed    0.00 sec

So, what do I need to change in the CMakeLists.txt to have CTest run with --verbose at all times? Is there a better way to use Boost unit tests with CMake/CTest?

You can set the environment variable CTEST_OUTPUT_ON_FAILURE, which will show you any output from the test program whenever the test fails. One way to do this when using Makefiles and the command line would be as follows:

env CTEST_OUTPUT_ON_FAILURE=1 make check

This Stack Overflow question and answer shows how to set environment variables in Visual Studio.

You could call ctest directly, after cmaking and making your project.

ctest --verbose

1. You can check the Testing/Temporary subfolder. It is automatically created after running make test. This folder contains two files: LastTest.log and LastTestsFailed.log. LastTest.log contains desired output for run tests. LastTestFailed.log contains names of failed tests. So you can check them manually after executing make test.

2. The second way is to get ctest to show you the content of log files after running tests:

3. place in build dir (from which you run make test) file CTestCustom.ctest (you can do it with configure file command, for example) with following contents

 CTEST_CUSTOM_POST_TEST("cat Testing/Temporary/LastTest.log")

Instead of cat you may use whatever Windows cmd command that does similar things.

2. run make test again and get profit!

additional info about customizing ctest you can find here. Just step to "Customizing cmake" section. Good luck!

There is a very simple solution (which for some reason is difficult to find via Google Search):

ctest --output-on-failure

If you use CMake with Visual Studio's open folder function you can add the

"ctestCommandArgs": "--output-on-failure"

setting to your build configuration.

I had to add "check" target by myself. "make tests" does nothing by some reason. So what I did (as was suggest somewhere on stackoverflow) - I added this target manually. To get verbose output I just wrote it like:

add_custom_target(check COMMAND ${CMAKE_CTEST_COMMAND} --verbose)

This makes test output more verbose:

make test ARGS="-V"

My approach is a combination of the answers from ony, from zbyszek, and from tarc. I use the ${CMAKE_COMMAND} variable (which is set to the absolute path to the invoked cmake executable) with the -E env CTEST_OUTPUT_ON_FAILURE=1 argument to invoke the actual ctest command using ${CMAKE_CTEST_COMMAND} -C $<CONFIG>. To help clarify what is going on, I start with three cmake -E echo commands to show the current working directory and the ctest command to be invoked. Here is how I call add_custom_target.

add_custom_target(check 
		${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E echo CWD=${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}
		COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E echo CMD=${CMAKE_CTEST_COMMAND} -C $<CONFIG>
		COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E echo ----------------------------------
		COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E env CTEST_OUTPUT_ON_FAILURE=1
			${CMAKE_CTEST_COMMAND} -C $<CONFIG>
	WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}
	DEPENDS ALL_BUILD
	)

This plays nice with the MSVC IDE where any test errors are shown as clickable compilation errors. See cmake -E env for documentation of the cmake -E portable command line tool mode. I also add a dependency on ALL_BUILD so that all projects will be built before invoking the check target. (On Linux builds, one may need to replace ALL_BUILD with ALL; I have not tested this on Linux yet.)

For people using Visual Studio, here another variation (hack) on the theme:

cmake -E env CTEST_OUTPUT_ON_FAILURE=1 cmake --build . --target RUN_TESTS

ctest -VV or ctest --extra-verbose

From documentation:

> Enable more verbose output from tests. > > Test output is normally suppressed and only summary information is > displayed. This option will show even more test output.

There's now a CMake variable that allows you to modify the behaviour of make test. CMAKE_CTEST_ARGUMENTS lets you set a list of arguments to pass to ctest when run via make test.

So adding this to your CMake file:

set(CMAKE_CTEST_ARGUMENTS "--verbose")

Means CTest will always run verbose. Or for just the output of the failed tests, use:

set(CMAKE_CTEST_ARGUMENTS "--output-on-failure")

to show the result with XML file you have to execute the test with the following command

~$ ctest -T Test

and we found the result in the Testing/1234123432/test.xml and other files are generated too in Testing Folder