Here is a self contained example that shows how to add valgrind tests to a CMake project. The example consists of a single C++ source file main.cpp:
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
double* leak = new double[10];
std::cout << "Hello!" << std::endl;
}
The code contains an intentional leak which should be picked up by valgrind. We also need a CMakeLists.txt file which requires CMake >= 2.8:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8)
project (ValgrindExample)
include (CTest)
add_executable(example main.cpp)
add_test(example_test example)
Here it is important to include the CTest module with include instead of just enabling tests with enable_testing(). The CTest module takes care of setting up the machinery for being able to run memory checks with tests (e.g., it locates the valgrind executable).
Now we can open a shell session in the project folder and create a Ninja build tree:
$ mkdir build; cd build
$ cmake -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ..
We can build and run tests without valgrind in the regular way:
$ ninja
[2/2] Linking CXX executable example
$ ninja test
[0/1] Running tests...
...
100% tests passed, 0 tests failed out of 1
Total Test time (real) = 0.01 sec
To run tests with valgrind we have to use CMake's ctest executable with the test action memcheck:
$ ctest -T memcheck
...
1/1 MemCheck #1: example_test ..................... Passed 0.77 sec
100% tests passed, 0 tests failed out of 1
Total Test time (real) = 0.77 sec
-- Processing memory checking output:
Memory checking results:
Memory Leak - 2
ctest prints a summary of the memory checking results. The detailed output of valgrind is located in a temporary directory in the build tree:
$ cat ./Testing/Temporary/MemoryChecker.*.log
==4565== 80 bytes in 1 blocks are definitely lost in loss record 37 of 64
==4565== at 0x10000B681: malloc (in /usr/local/Cellar/valgrind/3.12.0/lib/valgrind/vgpreload_memcheck-amd64-darwin.so)
==4565== by 0x1000507DD: operator new(unsigned long) (in /usr/lib/libc++.1.dylib)
==4565== by 0x100000F93: main (main.cpp:5)
...
It is not possible to automatically run valgrind when you run ninja test because CMake's built-in test target cannot be modified and always runs tests in the regular way. We can however add a custom CMake target which invokes ctest with the -T memcheck option and then prints the detailed valgrind report:
add_custom_target(test_memcheck
COMMAND ${CMAKE_CTEST_COMMAND}
--force-new-ctest-process --test-action memcheck
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E cat "${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/Testing/Temporary/MemoryChecker.*.log"
WORKING_DIRECTORY "${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}")
--test-action is the verbose version of the switch -T.
We then can invoke valgrind testing from Ninja with
$ ninja test_memcheck
and get the results as if we ran valgrind manually.
