Setting Up the Unity Testing Framework
I’ve been drinking the Test First kool-aide for years. So when I write embedded code for an Arduino, I want to test that code before pushing it to my lovingly hand-wired circuit. C doesn’t get a lot of love in the testing world, which is a shame. It’s probably easier to write automated tests for C than any other language.
One of my favorite tools for light weight testing is Unity from Throw the Switch. In it’s default form it offers good testing capabilities. The source repository has an “extras” folder which supports a more full-featured testing framework. Here’s my recipe for adding the full framework to a project.
To see how this fits into the larger use case of project setup for test driven embedded code, have a read of Makefiles for Test Driven Code.
Assembling the Source
I clone the source repo (or update it) on my workstation.
In my project, under the project root folder, I add a “unity” folder, which we’ll call the library folder for purposes of our discussion.
From the unity repo, copy the contents of the “src” folder to the library folder.
From the unity repo, copy the contents of the “extra/fixture/src” folder to the library folder.
Build the Library
In the unity library folder, add the following Makefile:
# unity/Makefile
LIBNAME=unity
SRC=$(wildcard *.c)
BASES=$(basename $(SRC))
OBJS=$(addsuffix .o, $(BASES))
lib$(LIBNAME).a: $(OBJS)
ar -rs $@ $^
clean:
rm -rf *.o
rm -rf *.a
By default, running make in this folder will build a file libunity.a, which will include all of the files from the library.