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

Question

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?

Answer 1

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.