Unit Test of Capsules using Google Test Framework

Software testing is an important part of modern system development. It is a collection of methods used to detect and correct bugs and faults found in software code. Unit testing is a widely used technique in software testing where individual units of source code are isolated, often divided up into classes and functions, and tested separately. When developing in a modeling environment, the system components and their respective behavior are expressed by models written in the Unified Modeling Language (UML). These model descriptions are then used to automatically generate programming code for compilation into real-time systems. The generated code can in turn be subjected to unit testing in order to aid in the verification of the systems behavior and functionality. The modeling tool Rational Software Architect RealTime Edition (RSARTE), developed by IBM, is one example of such an environment. The generated code from the UML models in RSARTE is designed to execute in a real-time computing C++ runtime environment. An essential building block for real-time functionality is the Capsule model. A capsule is an element with an internal state-machine and ports defining its behavior and communication with other capsules. This construction is of great help when programming concurrent real-time applications. Due to the complexity provided by the real-time runtime environment, it is difficult to isolate and unit test the behavior of designed capsules. In this thesis we will show that a capsule in this environment can be isolated and then subjected to unit testing with the help of an integrated third party unit test framework. Also, before integrating a suitable framework, we will select one by doing a review, discussion and a comparison of different mature and available unit test frameworks for use in the C++ language