Criterion

A dead-simple, yet extensible, C unit testing framework.

Philosophy

Most test frameworks for C require a lot of boilerplate code to set up tests and test suites -- you need to create a main, then register new test suites, then register the tests within these suits, and finally call the right functions.

This gives the user great control, at the unfortunate cost of simplicity.

Criterion follows the KISS principle, while keeping the control the user would have with other frameworks:

• Tests are automatically registered when declared.
• Implements a xUnit framework structure.
• A default entry point is provided, no need to declare a main unless you want to do special handling.
• Test are isolated in their own process, crashes and signals can be reported and tested.
• Progress and statistics can be followed in real time with report hooks.
• TAP output format can be enabled with an option.
• Runs on Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X (Windows is currenly not completely supported).

Downloads

• Linux (x86_64)
• OS X (x86_64)
• FreeBSD (x86_64)

If you have a different platform, you can still build the library from source

Documentation

An online documentation is available on ReadTheDocs (PDF | Zip | Epub)

Samples

Sample tests can be found in the sample directory.

• A simple test
• Using multiple suites
• Writing assertions
• Adding test fixtures
• Tests with signals
• Using report hooks

Contributing

Contributions are welcomed, but must follow a simple set of rules in order to be merged.

Please follow these conventions if you want your pull request(s) accepted.

General

• Use 4 (four) spaces for indentation.
• No trailing whitespaces.
• 80 chars column limit.
• No trash files. Trash files are by-products of the compilation process, or generated files that does not need to be under version control.
• Pull requests must compile and work properly.
• Pull requests must be mergeable automatically.
• Number of commits in a pull request should be kept to one commit and all additional commits must be squashed.
• You may have more than one commit in a pull request if the commits are separate changes, otherwise squash them.

Translations

• You can contribute new translation files for output messages, on the condition that you are fluent with the language itself.
• Each correction on existing translations must be followed by a rationale ("why would the translation be better if the change is applied?")

F.A.Q.

Q. What's wrong with other test frameworks?
A. I worked with CUnit and Check, and I must say that they do their job very well -- the only thing that bugs me is that setting up a test suite from scratch is a pain, it should really be simpler. Most (if not all) high-level languages have test frameworks with automatic test registration, but all the ones for C require you to set up a main, manually register suites, then tests. Criterion tries to fix these shortcomings.

Q. Where has this been tested?
A. Currently, on Linux 2.6.32 and Linux 3.15.7, although it should work on most *nix systems; Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10, and FreeBSD 10.0. Windows is currently not supported, but it being worked on.