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Does the Boost.Test framework itself have any tests? Boost seems to have lots of regression tests for the other libraries, written in Boost.Test of course. But how does one make sure that the test framework itself is correct?

gthomaslynch
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  • Please see [Trusted Computing Base](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_computing_base) – JohnFilleau Mar 06 '20 at 22:32
  • So you are saying it's not? Or what are you saying? – gthomaslynch Mar 06 '20 at 22:46
  • Well, I left it as a comment and not an answer, because I don't have an answer for either of your questions, but it looks like the Boost.Test framework could be considered a trusted computing base. If Boost.Test is broken, then we can't reliably say that any test of Boost.Test done by Boost.Test is correct. We just have to ASSUME that Boost.Test is correct based on other measurements. That could be one argument for making it as simple as possible. If I knew about any Boost.Test tests, though, I'd have answered the question. – JohnFilleau Mar 07 '20 at 00:08
  • This is the Boost.Test regression matrix: https://www.boost.org/development/tests/develop/developer/test.html . There is a Travis that is more or less up to date from here: https://github.com/boostorg/test and I am working on polishing the Appveyor. As pointed out by the accepted answer, the tests are here: https://github.com/boostorg/test/tree/develop/test – Raffi May 01 '20 at 17:53

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boost/libs/test$ ls test
Jamfile.v2           execution_monitor-ts inputs               selfcontained.cpp    usage-variants-ts
README.md            framework-ts         multithreading-ts    smoke-ts             utils-ts
baseline-outputs     gen_coverage.sh      prg_exec_monitor-ts  test-organization-ts writing-test-ts

So it looks to me that there are a ton of tests, for Boost.Test!

From a cursory glance, these tests look like they aren't using boost.test, they are testing string outputs from the terminal on expected outputs.

user14717
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  • Thanks! Actually turns out I missed these because my local boost install included only the libs that we build, and we only use the header version of Boost.Test – gthomaslynch Mar 09 '20 at 22:54
  • The release package of Boost does not contain the tests for libraries. – Raffi May 01 '20 at 17:55