Nico Brailovsky's thought repository

I like Google test and Google mock (C++ only) a lot. These are really great tools to ensure the quality of your code. They do have one problem however, especially when working with a legacy codebase: many times you need to change a signature for a function and your tests begin to fail. Those tests shouldn't really fail, they shouldn't compile at all because you're now trying to mock a function which doesn't exists anymore.

I worked on a patch to check if a class and its parent share the same methods, but I hit some major roadblocks which I believe cannot be saved:

• You have no way of detecting if the parent's method is actually virtual. It may have the same signature, yet if it isn't virtual the mock serves no purpose
• You have no (easy) way of detecting if the method is defined in your parent's parent

Even though this code will never be useful, I thought I might as well post this here, just in case anyone comes up with a solution for those problems.

// :!g++ foo.cpp -lgtest_main -lgmock && ./a.out
#include <gtest/gtest.h>
#include <gmock/gmock.h>
using namespace testing;
/**
 * "Real" application
 */
class Foo {
    public:
    virtual int bar(int) { return 1; }
    //virtual int bar(void) { return 1; }
};
class Do {
    public:
    int something(Foo &foo){ return foo.bar(1); }
};
/**
 * Class used to compare method ptrs. We need to inherit from class C
 * to forward the calls to the derived methods.
 */
template <class C, class D>
class Mocks_Must_Exist_In : public C {
    public:
    // We don't know in the derived class the typeof the parent class
    // so we define a common name using some template magic
    typedef C ParentClass;
    // Actually we don't know our own class either
    typedef D Self;
    // Function ptr definitions are ugly so we might as well use
    // a template to hide it under the rug
    template <class F, class G>
    void mock_created_for_unexisting_method(F f, G g){ f = g; }
};
#define METHOD_EXISTS(Method)
    void defined_##Method() {
        mock_created_for_unexisting_method(&Self::Method, &ParentClass::Method);
    }
/**
 * Checked mock, shouldn't compile if Foo's interface changes
 */
class FooMock : public Mocks_Must_Exist_In< Foo, FooMock > {
    public:
    MOCK_METHOD1(bar, int(int));
    METHOD_EXISTS(bar);
};
/**
 * Unchecked mock, should compile if Foos interface changes
 */
class FooMock2 {
    public:
    MOCK_METHOD0(bar, int());
};
TEST(FooTest, ThisShouldCompile) {
    FooMock foo;
    EXPECT_CALL(foo, bar(_)).WillOnce(Return(42));
    EXPECT_EQ(42, Do().something(foo));
}