CTest: How to set WORKING_DIRECTORY globally? - cmake

Question

Recently, I have been building a simple test-suite with CTest. In its most simple form it looked something like this:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.7)
project(testsuite)
enable_testing()
add_test(NAME test_0
WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}
COMMAND script.sh arg-0)
add_test(NAME test_1
WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}
COMMAND script.sh arg-1)
add_test(NAME test_2
WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}
COMMAND script.sh arg-2)
However, as it was growing, I quickly became tired of having to repeat WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} in every test.
Question: Is there a way to set WORKING_DIRECTORY globally (or, yet better, locally within each test subdirectory)? Something like
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.7)
project(testsuite)
enable_testing()
set(DEFAULT_WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR})
add_test(NAME test_0
COMMAND script.sh arg-0)
add_test(NAME test_1
COMMAND script.sh arg-1)
add_test(NAME test_2
COMMAND script.sh arg-2)
The closest to a solution so far is a recommendation of my dear colleague to define a test-generating function:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.7)
project(testsuite)
enable_testing()
function(add_my_test TEST_NAME TEST_COMMAND TEST_ARGUMENTS)
add_test(NAME ${TEST_NAME}
WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}
COMMAND ${TEST_COMMAND} ${TEST_ARGUMENTS})
endfunction()
add_my_test(test_0 script.sh arg-0)
add_my_test(test_1 script.sh arg-1)
add_my_test(test_2 script.sh arg-2)
This works fine but it feels like an unnecessary level of indirection.
In the end, I opted for using a fixture to copy the necessary parts into the build folder, test there and clean up again; this is probably a cleaner and more idiomatic solution. Nevertheless, out of curiosity I would still be interested in a solution to the original problem.

Answer 1

Is there a way to set WORKING_DIRECTORY globally
No. The default WORKING_DIRECTORY for add_test is specified in documentation.
This works fine
Do it. I would do:
macro(add_my_test)
add_test(
WORKING_DIRECTORY "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}"
${ARGV}
)
endmacro()
add_my_test(
NAME test_1
COMMAND script.sh arg-1
)
You can also roll your own functionality 'Overwrite' cmake command using a macro and restore its default behavior , but I believe just a wrapper function is great and clean.