Step 6: Adding Support for a Testing Dashboard — CMake 4.1.2 Documentation

# Step 6: Adding Support for a Testing Dashboard

Adding support for submitting our test results to a dashboard is simple. We already defined a number of tests for our project in Testing Support. Now we just have to run those tests and submit them to CDash.

## Exercise 1 - Send Results to a Testing Dashboard

### Goal

Display our CTest results with CDash.

### Helpful Resources

- `ctest(1)`

- `include()`

- `CTest`

### Files to Edit

- `CMakeLists.txt`

### Getting Started

For this exercise, complete `TODO 1` in the top-level `CMakeLists.txt` by including the `CTest` module. This will enable testing with CTest as well as dashboard submissions to CDash, so we can safely remove the call to `enable_testing()`.

We will also need to acquire a `CTestConfig.cmake` file to be placed in the top-level directory. When run, the `ctest` executable will read this file to gather information about the testing dashboard. It contains:

- The project "Nightly" start time

  - The time when a 24 hour "day" starts for this project.

- The URL of the CDash instance where the submission's generated documents will be sent

For this tutorial, a public dashboard server is used and its corresponding `CTestConfig.cmake` file is provided for you in this step's root directory. In practice, this file would be downloaded from a project's `Settings` page on the CDash instance intended to host the test results. Once downloaded from CDash, the file should not be modified locally.

CTestConfig.cmake

    set(CTEST_NIGHTLY_START_TIME "00:00:00 EST")

    set(CTEST_SUBMIT_URL "https://my.cdash.org/submit.php?project=CMakeTutorial")

### Build and Run

Note that as part of the CDash submission some information about your development system (e.g. site name or full pathnames) may displayed publicly.

To create a simple test dashboard, run the `cmake` executable or the `cmake-gui` to configure the project but do not build it yet. Instead, navigate to the build directory and run:

    ctest [-VV] -D Experimental

Remember, for multi-config generators (e.g. Visual Studio), the configuration type must be specified:

    ctest [-VV] -C Debug -D Experimental

Or, from an IDE, build the `Experimental` target.

The `ctest` executable will build the project, run any tests, and submit the results to Kitware's public dashboard: https://my.cdash.org/index.php?project=CMakeTutorial.

### Solution

The only CMake code changed needed in this step was to enable dashboard submissions to CDash by including the `CTest` module in our top-level `CMakeLists.txt`:

TODO 1: Click to show/hide answer
TODO 1: CMakeLists.txt

    include(CTest)