Library to facilitate the use of the "design by contract" principle

c++ design-by-contract
yesraaj picture yesraaj · Jul 24, 2009 · Viewed 9.5k times · Source

Is there any library that aids in implementing the design by contract principle in a C++ application?

In particular, I'm looking for a library that facilities the usage of the principle, something like this.

Answer

Daniel Daranas picture Daniel Daranas · Jul 24, 2009

I followed the teachings of the following articles:

  • An exception or a bug? (Miro Samek, C/C++ Users Journal, 2003)
  • Simple Support for Design by Contract in C++ (Pedro Guerreiro, TOOLS, 2001)

What I ultimately applied was pretty much Samek's approach. Just creating macros for REQUIRE, ENSURE, CHECK and INVARIANT (based on the existing assert macro) was very useful. Of course it's not as good as native language support but anyway, it allows you to get most of the practical value from the technique.

As for libraries, I don't think that it pays to use one, because one important value of the assertion mechanism is its simplicity.

For the difference between debug and production code, see When should assertions stay in production code?.

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