Unit Testing C Code

Question

I worked on an embedded system this summer written in straight C   It was an existing project that the company I work for had taken over   I have become quite accustomed to writing unit tests in Java using JUnit but was at a loss as to the best way to write unit tests for existing code  which needed refactoring  as well as new code added to the system   Are there any projects out there that make unit testing plain C code as easy as unit testing Java code with JUnit   Any insight that would apply specifically to embedded development  cross-compiling to arm-linux platform  would be greatly appreciated

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First  look here  http   en wikipedia org wiki List of unit testing frameworks C  My company has a C library our customers use   We use CxxTest  a C   unit test library  to  test the code   CppUnit will also work   If you re stuck in C  I d recommend RCUNIT  but CUnit is good too

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I don t use a framework  I just use autotools  check  target support   Implement a  main  and use assert s    My test dir Makefile am s  look like   check PROGRAMS   test oe amqp  test oe amqp SOURCES   test oe amqp c test oe amqp LDADD   -L  top builddir  components common -loecommon test oe amqp CFLAGS   -I  top srcdir  components common -static  TESTS   test oe amqp

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I use CxxTest for an embedded c c   environment  primarily C        I prefer CxxTest because it has a perl python script to build the test runner   After a small slope to get it setup  smaller still since you don t have to write the test runner   it s pretty easy to use  includes samples and useful documentation    The most work was setting up the  hardware  the code accesses so I could unit module test effectively   After that it s easy to add new unit test cases   As mentioned previously it is a C C   unit test framework   So you will need a C   compiler   CxxTest User Guide CxxTest Wiki

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Minunit is an incredibly simple unit testing framework  I m using it to unit test c microcontroller code for avr

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There is CUnit  And Embedded Unit is unit testing framework for Embedded C System  Its design was copied from JUnit and CUnit and more  and then adapted somewhat for Embedded C System  Embedded Unit does not require std C libs  All objects are allocated to const area   And Tessy automates the unit testing of embedded software

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I didn t get far testing a legacy C application before I started looking for a way to mock functions  I needed mocks badly to isolate the C file I want to test from others  I gave cmock a try and I think I will adopt it   Cmock scans header files and generates mock functions based on prototypes it finds  Mocks will allow you to test a C file in perfect isolation  All you will have to do is to link your test file with mocks instead of your real object files   Another advantage of cmock is that it will validate parameters passed to mocked functions  and it will let you specify what return value the mocks should provide  This is very useful to test different flows of execution in your functions   Tests consist of the typical testA    testB   functions in which you build expectations  call functions to test and check asserts   The last step is to generate a runner for your tests with unity  Cmock is tied to the unity test framework  Unity is as easy to learn as any other unit test framework   Well worth a try and quite easy to grasp   http   sourceforge net apps trac cmock wiki  Update 1  Another framework I am investigating is Cmockery   http   code google com p cmockery   It is a pure C framework supporting unit testing and mocking  It has no dependency on ruby  contrary to Cmock  and it has very little dependency on external libs   It requires a bit more manual work to setup mocks because it does no code generation  That does not represent a lot of work for an existing project since prototypes won t change much  once you have your mocks  you won t need to change them for a while  this is my case   Extra typing provides complete control of mocks  If there is something you don t like  you simply change your mock   No need of a special test runner  You only need need to create an array of tests and pass it to a run tests function  A bit more manual work here too but I definitely like the idea of a self-contained autonomous framework   Plus it contains some nifty C tricks I didn t know    Overall Cmockery needs a bit more understanding of mocks to get started  Examples should help you overcome this  It looks like it can do the job with simpler mechanics

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I used RCUNIT to do some unit testing for embedded code on PC before testing on the target  Good hardware interface abstraction is important else endianness and memory mapped registers are going to kill you

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I use CxxTest for an embedded c c   environment  primarily C        I prefer CxxTest because it has a perl python script to build the test runner   After a small slope to get it setup  smaller still since you don t have to write the test runner   it s pretty easy to use  includes samples and useful documentation    The most work was setting up the  hardware  the code accesses so I could unit module test effectively   After that it s easy to add new unit test cases   As mentioned previously it is a C C   unit test framework   So you will need a C   compiler   CxxTest User Guide CxxTest Wiki

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Personally I like the Google Test framework     The real difficulty in testing C code is breaking the dependencies on external modules so you can isolate code in units   This can be especially problematic when you are trying to get tests around legacy code   In this case I often find myself using the linker to use stubs functions in tests   This is what people are referring to when they talk about  seams    In C your only option really is to use the pre-processor or the linker to mock out your dependencies   A typical test suite in one of my C projects might look like this    include  myimplementationfile c   include  lt gtest gtest h gt      Mock out external dependency on mylogger o void Logger log         TEST FactorialTest  Zero        EXPECT EQ 1  Factorial 0        Note that you are actually including the C file and not the header file   This gives the advantage of access to all the static data members   Here I mock out my logger  which might be in logger o and give an empty implementation   This means that the test file compiles and links independently from the rest of the code base and executes in isolation   As for cross-compiling the code  for this to work you need good facilities on the target   I have done this with googletest cross compiled to Linux on a PowerPC architecture     This makes sense because there you have a full shell and os to gather your results   For less rich environments  which I classify as anything without a full OS  you should just build and run on the host   You should do this anyway so you can run the tests automatically as part of the build   I find testing C   code is generally much easier due to the fact that OO code is in general much less coupled than procedural  of course this depends a lot on coding style    Also in C   you can use tricks like dependency injection and method overriding to get seams into code that is otherwise encapsulated   Michael Feathers has an excellent book about testing legacy code   In one chapter he covers techniques for dealing with non-OO code which I highly recommend   Edit  I ve written a blog post about unit testing procedural code  with source available on GitHub   Edit  There is a new book coming out from the Pragmatic Programmers that specifically addresses unit testing C code which I highly recommend

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CppUTest - Highly recommended framework for unit testing C code    The examples in the book that is mentioned in this thread TDD for embedded C are written using CppUTest

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I m currently using the CuTest unit test framework   http   cutest sourceforge net   It s ideal for embedded systems as it s very lightweight and simple   I had no problems getting it to work on the target platform as well as on the desktop   In addition to writing the unit tests  all that s required is    a header file included wherever you re calling the CuTest routines a single additional  C  file to be compiled linked into the image some simple code added to to main to set up and call the unit tests - I just have this in a special main   function that gets compiled if UNITTEST is defined during the build    The system needs to support a heap and some stdio functionality  which not all embedded systems have   But the code is simple enough that you could probably work in alternatives to those requirements if your platform doesn t have them   With some judicious use of extern  C    blocks it also supports testing C   just fine

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LibU  http   koanlogic com libu  has an unit test module that allows explicit test suite case dependencies  test isolation  parallel execution and a customizable report formatter  default formats are xml and txt    The library is BSD licensed and contains many other useful modules - networking  debugging  commonly used data structures  configuration  etc  - should you need them in your projects

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I m currently using the CuTest unit test framework   http   cutest sourceforge net   It s ideal for embedded systems as it s very lightweight and simple   I had no problems getting it to work on the target platform as well as on the desktop   In addition to writing the unit tests  all that s required is    a header file included wherever you re calling the CuTest routines a single additional  C  file to be compiled linked into the image some simple code added to to main to set up and call the unit tests - I just have this in a special main   function that gets compiled if UNITTEST is defined during the build    The system needs to support a heap and some stdio functionality  which not all embedded systems have   But the code is simple enough that you could probably work in alternatives to those requirements if your platform doesn t have them   With some judicious use of extern  C    blocks it also supports testing C   just fine

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One technique to use is to develop the unit test code with a C   xUnit framework  and C   compiler   while maintaining the source for the target system as C modules   Make sure you regularly compile your C source under your cross-compiler  automatically with your unit tests if possible

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You also might want to take a look at libtap  a C testing framework which outputs the Test Anything Protocol  TAP  and thus integrates well with a variety of tools coming out for this technology   It s mostly used in the dynamic language world  but it s easy to use and becoming very popular   An example    include  lt tap h gt   int main          plan 5        ok 3    3       is  fnord    eek    two different strings not that way         ok 3  lt   8732    d  lt    d   3  8732       like  fnord    f yes no r  a-f          cmp ok 3    gt     10        done testing

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After reading Minunit I thought a better way was base the test in assert macro which I use a lot like defensive program technique  So I used the same idea of Minunit mixed with standard assert  You can see my framework  a good name could be NoMinunit  in k0ga s blog

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If you re still on the hunt for test frameworks  CUnitWin32 is one for the Win32 NT platform   This solves one fundamental problem that I faced with other testing frameworks  Namely global static variables are in a deterministic state because each test is executed as a separate process

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There is an elegant unit testing framework for C with support for mock objects called cmocka  It only requires the standard C library  works on a range of computing platforms  including embedded  and with different compilers   It also has support for different message output formats like Subunit  Test Anything Protocol and jUnit XML reports   cmocka has been created to also work on embedded platforms and also has Windows support   A simple test looks like this    include  lt stdarg h gt   include  lt stddef h gt   include  lt setjmp h gt   include  lt cmocka h gt      A test case that does nothing and succeeds     static void null test success void   state         void  state     unused       int main void        const struct CMUnitTest tests               cmocka unit test null test success              return cmocka run group tests tests  NULL  NULL       The API is fully documented and several examples are part of the source code   To get started with cmocka you should read the article on LWN net  Unit testing with mock objects in C  cmocka 1 0 has been released February 2015

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If you re still on the hunt for test frameworks  CUnitWin32 is one for the Win32 NT platform   This solves one fundamental problem that I faced with other testing frameworks  Namely global static variables are in a deterministic state because each test is executed as a separate process

User · Answer

I didn t get far testing a legacy C application before I started looking for a way to mock functions  I needed mocks badly to isolate the C file I want to test from others  I gave cmock a try and I think I will adopt it   Cmock scans header files and generates mock functions based on prototypes it finds  Mocks will allow you to test a C file in perfect isolation  All you will have to do is to link your test file with mocks instead of your real object files   Another advantage of cmock is that it will validate parameters passed to mocked functions  and it will let you specify what return value the mocks should provide  This is very useful to test different flows of execution in your functions   Tests consist of the typical testA    testB   functions in which you build expectations  call functions to test and check asserts   The last step is to generate a runner for your tests with unity  Cmock is tied to the unity test framework  Unity is as easy to learn as any other unit test framework   Well worth a try and quite easy to grasp   http   sourceforge net apps trac cmock wiki  Update 1  Another framework I am investigating is Cmockery   http   code google com p cmockery   It is a pure C framework supporting unit testing and mocking  It has no dependency on ruby  contrary to Cmock  and it has very little dependency on external libs   It requires a bit more manual work to setup mocks because it does no code generation  That does not represent a lot of work for an existing project since prototypes won t change much  once you have your mocks  you won t need to change them for a while  this is my case   Extra typing provides complete control of mocks  If there is something you don t like  you simply change your mock   No need of a special test runner  You only need need to create an array of tests and pass it to a run tests function  A bit more manual work here too but I definitely like the idea of a self-contained autonomous framework   Plus it contains some nifty C tricks I didn t know    Overall Cmockery needs a bit more understanding of mocks to get started  Examples should help you overcome this  It looks like it can do the job with simpler mechanics

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CppUTest - Highly recommended framework for unit testing C code    The examples in the book that is mentioned in this thread TDD for embedded C are written using CppUTest

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There is an elegant unit testing framework for C with support for mock objects called cmocka  It only requires the standard C library  works on a range of computing platforms  including embedded  and with different compilers   It also has support for different message output formats like Subunit  Test Anything Protocol and jUnit XML reports   cmocka has been created to also work on embedded platforms and also has Windows support   A simple test looks like this    include  lt stdarg h gt   include  lt stddef h gt   include  lt setjmp h gt   include  lt cmocka h gt      A test case that does nothing and succeeds     static void null test success void   state         void  state     unused       int main void        const struct CMUnitTest tests               cmocka unit test null test success              return cmocka run group tests tests  NULL  NULL       The API is fully documented and several examples are part of the source code   To get started with cmocka you should read the article on LWN net  Unit testing with mock objects in C  cmocka 1 0 has been released February 2015

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Google has excellent testing framework  https   github com google googletest blob master googletest docs primer md  And yes  as far as I see it will work with plain C  i e  doesn t require C   features  may require C   compiler  not sure

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I m surprised that no one mentioned Cutter  http   cutter sourceforge net   You can test C and C    it seamlessly integrates with autotools and has a really nice tutorial available

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cmockery at http   code google com p cmockery

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One technique to use is to develop the unit test code with a C   xUnit framework  and C   compiler   while maintaining the source for the target system as C modules   Make sure you regularly compile your C source under your cross-compiler  automatically with your unit tests if possible

User · Answer

I m currently using the CuTest unit test framework   http   cutest sourceforge net   It s ideal for embedded systems as it s very lightweight and simple   I had no problems getting it to work on the target platform as well as on the desktop   In addition to writing the unit tests  all that s required is    a header file included wherever you re calling the CuTest routines a single additional  C  file to be compiled linked into the image some simple code added to to main to set up and call the unit tests - I just have this in a special main   function that gets compiled if UNITTEST is defined during the build    The system needs to support a heap and some stdio functionality  which not all embedded systems have   But the code is simple enough that you could probably work in alternatives to those requirements if your platform doesn t have them   With some judicious use of extern  C    blocks it also supports testing C   just fine

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I use CxxTest for an embedded c c   environment  primarily C        I prefer CxxTest because it has a perl python script to build the test runner   After a small slope to get it setup  smaller still since you don t have to write the test runner   it s pretty easy to use  includes samples and useful documentation    The most work was setting up the  hardware  the code accesses so I could unit module test effectively   After that it s easy to add new unit test cases   As mentioned previously it is a C C   unit test framework   So you will need a C   compiler   CxxTest User Guide CxxTest Wiki

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LibU  http   koanlogic com libu  has an unit test module that allows explicit test suite case dependencies  test isolation  parallel execution and a customizable report formatter  default formats are xml and txt    The library is BSD licensed and contains many other useful modules - networking  debugging  commonly used data structures  configuration  etc  - should you need them in your projects

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Cmockery is a recently launched project that consists on a very simple to use C library for writing unit tests

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If you re still on the hunt for test frameworks  CUnitWin32 is one for the Win32 NT platform   This solves one fundamental problem that I faced with other testing frameworks  Namely global static variables are in a deterministic state because each test is executed as a separate process

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If you are familiar with JUnit then I recommend CppUnit   http   cppunit sourceforge net cppunit-wiki  That is assuming you have c   compiler to do the unit tests  if not then I have to agree with Adam Rosenfield that check is what you want

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As a C newbie  I found the slides called Test driven development in C very helpful  Basically  it uses the standard assert   together with  amp  amp  to deliver a message  without any external dependencies  If someone is used to a full stack testing framework  this probably won t do

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I used RCUNIT to do some unit testing for embedded code on PC before testing on the target  Good hardware interface abstraction is important else endianness and memory mapped registers are going to kill you

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First  look here  http   en wikipedia org wiki List of unit testing frameworks C  My company has a C library our customers use   We use CxxTest  a C   unit test library  to  test the code   CppUnit will also work   If you re stuck in C  I d recommend RCUNIT  but CUnit is good too

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I don t use a framework  I just use autotools  check  target support   Implement a  main  and use assert s    My test dir Makefile am s  look like   check PROGRAMS   test oe amqp  test oe amqp SOURCES   test oe amqp c test oe amqp LDADD   -L  top builddir  components common -loecommon test oe amqp CFLAGS   -I  top srcdir  components common -static  TESTS   test oe amqp

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I just wrote Libcut out of frustration with existing C unit testing libraries  It has automatic type stringing of primitives  no need for test eq int  test eq long  test eq short  etc     only two different sets for primitives and strings  and consists of one header file  Here s a short example    include  lt libcut h gt   LIBCUT TEST test abc        LIBCUT TEST EQ 1  1       LIBCUT TEST NE 1  0       LIBCUT TEST STREQ  abc    abc        LIBCUT TEST STRNE  abc    def       LIBCUT MAIN test abc     It works only with C11  though

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After reading Minunit I thought a better way was base the test in assert macro which I use a lot like defensive program technique  So I used the same idea of Minunit mixed with standard assert  You can see my framework  a good name could be NoMinunit  in k0ga s blog

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One unit testing framework in C is Check  a list of unit testing frameworks in C can be found here and is reproduced below   Depending on how many standard library functions your runtime has  you may or not be able to use one of those   AceUnit AceUnit  Advanced C and Embedded Unit  bills itself as a comfortable C code unit test framework  It tries to mimick JUnit 4 x and includes reflection-like capabilities  AceUnit can be used in resource constraint environments  e g  embedded software development  and importantly it runs fine in environments where you cannot include a single standard header file and cannot invoke a single standard C function from the ANSI   ISO C libraries  It also has a Windows port  It does not use forks to trap signals  although the authors have expressed interest in adding such a feature  See the AceUnit homepage  GNU Autounit Much along the same lines as Check  including forking to run unit tests in a separate address space  in fact  the original author of Check borrowed the idea from GNU Autounit   GNU Autounit uses GLib extensively  which means that linking and such need special options  but this may not be a big problem to you  especially if you are already using GTK or GLib  See the GNU Autounit homepage  cUnit Also uses GLib  but does not fork to protect the address space of unit tests  CUnit Standard C  with plans for a Win32 GUI implementation  Does not currently fork or otherwise protect the address space of unit tests  In early development  See the CUnit homepage  CuTest A simple framework with just one  c and one  h file that you drop into your source tree  See the CuTest homepage  CppUnit The premier unit testing framework for C    you can also use it to test C code  It is stable  actively developed  and has a GUI interface  The primary reasons not to use CppUnit for C are first that it is quite big  and second you have to write your tests in C    which means you need a C   compiler  If these don   t sound like concerns  it is definitely worth considering  along with other C   unit testing frameworks  See the CppUnit homepage  embUnit embUnit  Embedded Unit  is another unit test framework for embedded systems  This one appears to be superseded by AceUnit  Embedded Unit homepage  MinUnit A minimal set of macros and that   s it  The point is to show how easy it is to unit test your code  See the MinUnit homepage  CUnit for Mr  Ando A CUnit implementation that is fairly new  and apparently still in early development  See the CUnit for Mr  Ando homepage  This list was last updated in March 2008   More frameworks  CMocka CMocka is a test framework for C with support for mock objects  It s easy to use and setup  See the CMocka homepage  Criterion Criterion is a cross-platform C unit testing framework supporting automatic test registration  parameterized tests  theories  and that can output to multiple formats  including TAP and JUnit XML  Each test is run in its own process  so signals and crashes can be reported or tested if needed  See the Criterion homepage for more information  HWUT HWUT is a general Unit Test tool with great support for C  It can help to create Makefiles  generate massive test cases coded in minimal  iteration tables   walk along state machines  generate C-stubs and more  The general approach is pretty unique  Verdicts are based on  good stdout bad stdout   The comparison function  though  is flexible  Thus  any type of script may be used for checking  It may be applied to any language that can produce standard output  See the HWUT homepage  CGreen A modern  portable  cross-language unit testing and mocking framework for C and C    It offers an optional BDD notation  a mocking library  the ability to run it in a single process  to make debugging easier   A test runner which discover automatically the test functions is available  But you can create your own programmatically  All those features  and more  are explained in the CGreen manual  Wikipedia gives a detailed list of C unit testing frameworks under List of unit testing frameworks  C

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First  look here  http   en wikipedia org wiki List of unit testing frameworks C  My company has a C library our customers use   We use CxxTest  a C   unit test library  to  test the code   CppUnit will also work   If you re stuck in C  I d recommend RCUNIT  but CUnit is good too

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Cmockery is a recently launched project that consists on a very simple to use C library for writing unit tests

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There is CUnit  And Embedded Unit is unit testing framework for Embedded C System  Its design was copied from JUnit and CUnit and more  and then adapted somewhat for Embedded C System  Embedded Unit does not require std C libs  All objects are allocated to const area   And Tessy automates the unit testing of embedded software

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cmockery at http   code google com p cmockery

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In case you are targeting Win32 platforms or NT kernel mode  you should have a look at cfix

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We wrote CHEAT  hosted on GitHub  for easy usability and portability   It has no dependencies and requires no installation or configuration  Only a header file and a test case is needed    include  lt cheat h gt   CHEAT TEST mathematics still work      cheat assert 2   2    4       cheat assert not 2   2    5       Tests compile into an executable that takes care of running the tests and reporting their outcomes     gcc -I   tests c     a out    --- 2 successful of 2 run SUCCESS   It has pretty colors too

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If you are familiar with JUnit then I recommend CppUnit   http   cppunit sourceforge net cppunit-wiki  That is assuming you have c   compiler to do the unit tests  if not then I have to agree with Adam Rosenfield that check is what you want

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You also might want to take a look at libtap  a C testing framework which outputs the Test Anything Protocol  TAP  and thus integrates well with a variety of tools coming out for this technology   It s mostly used in the dynamic language world  but it s easy to use and becoming very popular   An example    include  lt tap h gt   int main          plan 5        ok 3    3       is  fnord    eek    two different strings not that way         ok 3  lt   8732    d  lt    d   3  8732       like  fnord    f yes no r  a-f          cmp ok 3    gt     10        done testing

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API Sanity Checker     test framework for C C   libraries   An automatic generator of basic unit tests for a shared C C   library  It is able to generate reasonable  in most  but unfortunately not all  cases  input data for parameters and compose simple   quot sanity quot  or  quot shallow quot -quality  test cases for every function in the API through the analysis of declarations in header files  The quality of generated tests allows to check absence of critical errors in simple use cases  The tool is able to build and execute generated tests and detect crashes  segfaults   aborts  all kinds of emitted signals  non-zero program return code and program hanging   Examples   Test suite for fontconfig 2 8 0 Test suite for FreeType 2 4 8

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API Sanity Checker     test framework for C C   libraries   An automatic generator of basic unit tests for a shared C C   library  It is able to generate reasonable  in most  but unfortunately not all  cases  input data for parameters and compose simple   quot sanity quot  or  quot shallow quot -quality  test cases for every function in the API through the analysis of declarations in header files  The quality of generated tests allows to check absence of critical errors in simple use cases  The tool is able to build and execute generated tests and detect crashes  segfaults   aborts  all kinds of emitted signals  non-zero program return code and program hanging   Examples   Test suite for fontconfig 2 8 0 Test suite for FreeType 2 4 8

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Minunit is an incredibly simple unit testing framework  I m using it to unit test c microcontroller code for avr

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I used RCUNIT to do some unit testing for embedded code on PC before testing on the target  Good hardware interface abstraction is important else endianness and memory mapped registers are going to kill you

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Michael Feather s book  Working Effectively with Legacy Code  presents a lot of techniques specific to unit testing during C development   There are techniques related to dependency injection that are specific to C which I haven t seen anywhere else

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There is CUnit  And Embedded Unit is unit testing framework for Embedded C System  Its design was copied from JUnit and CUnit and more  and then adapted somewhat for Embedded C System  Embedded Unit does not require std C libs  All objects are allocated to const area   And Tessy automates the unit testing of embedded software

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Michael Feather s book  Working Effectively with Legacy Code  presents a lot of techniques specific to unit testing during C development   There are techniques related to dependency injection that are specific to C which I haven t seen anywhere else

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If you are familiar with JUnit then I recommend CppUnit   http   cppunit sourceforge net cppunit-wiki  That is assuming you have c   compiler to do the unit tests  if not then I have to agree with Adam Rosenfield that check is what you want

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In case you are targeting Win32 platforms or NT kernel mode  you should have a look at cfix

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I say almost the same as ratkok but if you have a embedded twist to the unit tests then    Unity - Highly recommended framework for unit testing C code   include  lt unity h gt   void test true should be true void        TEST ASSERT TRUE true      int main void        UNITY BEGIN        RUN TEST test true should be true       return UNITY END       The examples in the book that is mentioned in this thread TDD for embedded C are written using Unity  and CppUTest

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In case you are targeting Win32 platforms or NT kernel mode  you should have a look at cfix

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I used RCUNIT to do some unit testing for embedded code on PC before testing on the target  Good hardware interface abstraction is important else endianness and memory mapped registers are going to kill you

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other than my obvious bias  http   code google com p seatest   is a nice simple way to unit test C code  mimics xUnit

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I m currently using the CuTest unit test framework   http   cutest sourceforge net   It s ideal for embedded systems as it s very lightweight and simple   I had no problems getting it to work on the target platform as well as on the desktop   In addition to writing the unit tests  all that s required is    a header file included wherever you re calling the CuTest routines a single additional  C  file to be compiled linked into the image some simple code added to to main to set up and call the unit tests - I just have this in a special main   function that gets compiled if UNITTEST is defined during the build    The system needs to support a heap and some stdio functionality  which not all embedded systems have   But the code is simple enough that you could probably work in alternatives to those requirements if your platform doesn t have them   With some judicious use of extern  C    blocks it also supports testing C   just fine

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cmockery at http   code google com p cmockery

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Google has excellent testing framework  https   github com google googletest blob master googletest docs primer md  And yes  as far as I see it will work with plain C  i e  doesn t require C   features  may require C   compiler  not sure

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One unit testing framework in C is Check  a list of unit testing frameworks in C can be found here and is reproduced below   Depending on how many standard library functions your runtime has  you may or not be able to use one of those   AceUnit AceUnit  Advanced C and Embedded Unit  bills itself as a comfortable C code unit test framework  It tries to mimick JUnit 4 x and includes reflection-like capabilities  AceUnit can be used in resource constraint environments  e g  embedded software development  and importantly it runs fine in environments where you cannot include a single standard header file and cannot invoke a single standard C function from the ANSI   ISO C libraries  It also has a Windows port  It does not use forks to trap signals  although the authors have expressed interest in adding such a feature  See the AceUnit homepage  GNU Autounit Much along the same lines as Check  including forking to run unit tests in a separate address space  in fact  the original author of Check borrowed the idea from GNU Autounit   GNU Autounit uses GLib extensively  which means that linking and such need special options  but this may not be a big problem to you  especially if you are already using GTK or GLib  See the GNU Autounit homepage  cUnit Also uses GLib  but does not fork to protect the address space of unit tests  CUnit Standard C  with plans for a Win32 GUI implementation  Does not currently fork or otherwise protect the address space of unit tests  In early development  See the CUnit homepage  CuTest A simple framework with just one  c and one  h file that you drop into your source tree  See the CuTest homepage  CppUnit The premier unit testing framework for C    you can also use it to test C code  It is stable  actively developed  and has a GUI interface  The primary reasons not to use CppUnit for C are first that it is quite big  and second you have to write your tests in C    which means you need a C   compiler  If these don   t sound like concerns  it is definitely worth considering  along with other C   unit testing frameworks  See the CppUnit homepage  embUnit embUnit  Embedded Unit  is another unit test framework for embedded systems  This one appears to be superseded by AceUnit  Embedded Unit homepage  MinUnit A minimal set of macros and that   s it  The point is to show how easy it is to unit test your code  See the MinUnit homepage  CUnit for Mr  Ando A CUnit implementation that is fairly new  and apparently still in early development  See the CUnit for Mr  Ando homepage  This list was last updated in March 2008   More frameworks  CMocka CMocka is a test framework for C with support for mock objects  It s easy to use and setup  See the CMocka homepage  Criterion Criterion is a cross-platform C unit testing framework supporting automatic test registration  parameterized tests  theories  and that can output to multiple formats  including TAP and JUnit XML  Each test is run in its own process  so signals and crashes can be reported or tested if needed  See the Criterion homepage for more information  HWUT HWUT is a general Unit Test tool with great support for C  It can help to create Makefiles  generate massive test cases coded in minimal  iteration tables   walk along state machines  generate C-stubs and more  The general approach is pretty unique  Verdicts are based on  good stdout bad stdout   The comparison function  though  is flexible  Thus  any type of script may be used for checking  It may be applied to any language that can produce standard output  See the HWUT homepage  CGreen A modern  portable  cross-language unit testing and mocking framework for C and C    It offers an optional BDD notation  a mocking library  the ability to run it in a single process  to make debugging easier   A test runner which discover automatically the test functions is available  But you can create your own programmatically  All those features  and more  are explained in the CGreen manual  Wikipedia gives a detailed list of C unit testing frameworks under List of unit testing frameworks  C

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In case you are targeting Win32 platforms or NT kernel mode  you should have a look at cfix

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If you re still on the hunt for test frameworks  CUnitWin32 is one for the Win32 NT platform   This solves one fundamental problem that I faced with other testing frameworks  Namely global static variables are in a deterministic state because each test is executed as a separate process

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You also might want to take a look at libtap  a C testing framework which outputs the Test Anything Protocol  TAP  and thus integrates well with a variety of tools coming out for this technology   It s mostly used in the dynamic language world  but it s easy to use and becoming very popular   An example    include  lt tap h gt   int main          plan 5        ok 3    3       is  fnord    eek    two different strings not that way         ok 3  lt   8732    d  lt    d   3  8732       like  fnord    f yes no r  a-f          cmp ok 3    gt     10        done testing

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We wrote CHEAT  hosted on GitHub  for easy usability and portability   It has no dependencies and requires no installation or configuration  Only a header file and a test case is needed    include  lt cheat h gt   CHEAT TEST mathematics still work      cheat assert 2   2    4       cheat assert not 2   2    5       Tests compile into an executable that takes care of running the tests and reporting their outcomes     gcc -I   tests c     a out    --- 2 successful of 2 run SUCCESS   It has pretty colors too

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Cmockery is a recently launched project that consists on a very simple to use C library for writing unit tests

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As a C newbie  I found the slides called Test driven development in C very helpful  Basically  it uses the standard assert   together with  amp  amp  to deliver a message  without any external dependencies  If someone is used to a full stack testing framework  this probably won t do

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Personally I like the Google Test framework     The real difficulty in testing C code is breaking the dependencies on external modules so you can isolate code in units   This can be especially problematic when you are trying to get tests around legacy code   In this case I often find myself using the linker to use stubs functions in tests   This is what people are referring to when they talk about  seams    In C your only option really is to use the pre-processor or the linker to mock out your dependencies   A typical test suite in one of my C projects might look like this    include  myimplementationfile c   include  lt gtest gtest h gt      Mock out external dependency on mylogger o void Logger log         TEST FactorialTest  Zero        EXPECT EQ 1  Factorial 0        Note that you are actually including the C file and not the header file   This gives the advantage of access to all the static data members   Here I mock out my logger  which might be in logger o and give an empty implementation   This means that the test file compiles and links independently from the rest of the code base and executes in isolation   As for cross-compiling the code  for this to work you need good facilities on the target   I have done this with googletest cross compiled to Linux on a PowerPC architecture     This makes sense because there you have a full shell and os to gather your results   For less rich environments  which I classify as anything without a full OS  you should just build and run on the host   You should do this anyway so you can run the tests automatically as part of the build   I find testing C   code is generally much easier due to the fact that OO code is in general much less coupled than procedural  of course this depends a lot on coding style    Also in C   you can use tricks like dependency injection and method overriding to get seams into code that is otherwise encapsulated   Michael Feathers has an excellent book about testing legacy code   In one chapter he covers techniques for dealing with non-OO code which I highly recommend   Edit  I ve written a blog post about unit testing procedural code  with source available on GitHub   Edit  There is a new book coming out from the Pragmatic Programmers that specifically addresses unit testing C code which I highly recommend

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There is CUnit  And Embedded Unit is unit testing framework for Embedded C System  Its design was copied from JUnit and CUnit and more  and then adapted somewhat for Embedded C System  Embedded Unit does not require std C libs  All objects are allocated to const area   And Tessy automates the unit testing of embedded software

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I just wrote Libcut out of frustration with existing C unit testing libraries  It has automatic type stringing of primitives  no need for test eq int  test eq long  test eq short  etc     only two different sets for primitives and strings  and consists of one header file  Here s a short example    include  lt libcut h gt   LIBCUT TEST test abc        LIBCUT TEST EQ 1  1       LIBCUT TEST NE 1  0       LIBCUT TEST STREQ  abc    abc        LIBCUT TEST STRNE  abc    def       LIBCUT MAIN test abc     It works only with C11  though

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I don t use a framework  I just use autotools  check  target support   Implement a  main  and use assert s    My test dir Makefile am s  look like   check PROGRAMS   test oe amqp  test oe amqp SOURCES   test oe amqp c test oe amqp LDADD   -L  top builddir  components common -loecommon test oe amqp CFLAGS   -I  top srcdir  components common -static  TESTS   test oe amqp

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You also might want to take a look at libtap  a C testing framework which outputs the Test Anything Protocol  TAP  and thus integrates well with a variety of tools coming out for this technology   It s mostly used in the dynamic language world  but it s easy to use and becoming very popular   An example    include  lt tap h gt   int main          plan 5        ok 3    3       is  fnord    eek    two different strings not that way         ok 3  lt   8732    d  lt    d   3  8732       like  fnord    f yes no r  a-f          cmp ok 3    gt     10        done testing

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try lcut  - http   code google com p lcut

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I don t use a framework  I just use autotools  check  target support   Implement a  main  and use assert s    My test dir Makefile am s  look like   check PROGRAMS   test oe amqp  test oe amqp SOURCES   test oe amqp c test oe amqp LDADD   -L  top builddir  components common -loecommon test oe amqp CFLAGS   -I  top srcdir  components common -static  TESTS   test oe amqp

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try lcut  - http   code google com p lcut

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Minunit is an incredibly simple unit testing framework  I m using it to unit test c microcontroller code for avr

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One unit testing framework in C is Check  a list of unit testing frameworks in C can be found here and is reproduced below   Depending on how many standard library functions your runtime has  you may or not be able to use one of those   AceUnit AceUnit  Advanced C and Embedded Unit  bills itself as a comfortable C code unit test framework  It tries to mimick JUnit 4 x and includes reflection-like capabilities  AceUnit can be used in resource constraint environments  e g  embedded software development  and importantly it runs fine in environments where you cannot include a single standard header file and cannot invoke a single standard C function from the ANSI   ISO C libraries  It also has a Windows port  It does not use forks to trap signals  although the authors have expressed interest in adding such a feature  See the AceUnit homepage  GNU Autounit Much along the same lines as Check  including forking to run unit tests in a separate address space  in fact  the original author of Check borrowed the idea from GNU Autounit   GNU Autounit uses GLib extensively  which means that linking and such need special options  but this may not be a big problem to you  especially if you are already using GTK or GLib  See the GNU Autounit homepage  cUnit Also uses GLib  but does not fork to protect the address space of unit tests  CUnit Standard C  with plans for a Win32 GUI implementation  Does not currently fork or otherwise protect the address space of unit tests  In early development  See the CUnit homepage  CuTest A simple framework with just one  c and one  h file that you drop into your source tree  See the CuTest homepage  CppUnit The premier unit testing framework for C    you can also use it to test C code  It is stable  actively developed  and has a GUI interface  The primary reasons not to use CppUnit for C are first that it is quite big  and second you have to write your tests in C    which means you need a C   compiler  If these don   t sound like concerns  it is definitely worth considering  along with other C   unit testing frameworks  See the CppUnit homepage  embUnit embUnit  Embedded Unit  is another unit test framework for embedded systems  This one appears to be superseded by AceUnit  Embedded Unit homepage  MinUnit A minimal set of macros and that   s it  The point is to show how easy it is to unit test your code  See the MinUnit homepage  CUnit for Mr  Ando A CUnit implementation that is fairly new  and apparently still in early development  See the CUnit for Mr  Ando homepage  This list was last updated in March 2008   More frameworks  CMocka CMocka is a test framework for C with support for mock objects  It s easy to use and setup  See the CMocka homepage  Criterion Criterion is a cross-platform C unit testing framework supporting automatic test registration  parameterized tests  theories  and that can output to multiple formats  including TAP and JUnit XML  Each test is run in its own process  so signals and crashes can be reported or tested if needed  See the Criterion homepage for more information  HWUT HWUT is a general Unit Test tool with great support for C  It can help to create Makefiles  generate massive test cases coded in minimal  iteration tables   walk along state machines  generate C-stubs and more  The general approach is pretty unique  Verdicts are based on  good stdout bad stdout   The comparison function  though  is flexible  Thus  any type of script may be used for checking  It may be applied to any language that can produce standard output  See the HWUT homepage  CGreen A modern  portable  cross-language unit testing and mocking framework for C and C    It offers an optional BDD notation  a mocking library  the ability to run it in a single process  to make debugging easier   A test runner which discover automatically the test functions is available  But you can create your own programmatically  All those features  and more  are explained in the CGreen manual  Wikipedia gives a detailed list of C unit testing frameworks under List of unit testing frameworks  C

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Cmockery is a recently launched project that consists on a very simple to use C library for writing unit tests

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cmockery at http   code google com p cmockery

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One technique to use is to develop the unit test code with a C   xUnit framework  and C   compiler   while maintaining the source for the target system as C modules   Make sure you regularly compile your C source under your cross-compiler  automatically with your unit tests if possible

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other than my obvious bias  http   code google com p seatest   is a nice simple way to unit test C code  mimics xUnit

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Minunit is an incredibly simple unit testing framework  I m using it to unit test c microcontroller code for avr

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I use CxxTest for an embedded c c   environment  primarily C        I prefer CxxTest because it has a perl python script to build the test runner   After a small slope to get it setup  smaller still since you don t have to write the test runner   it s pretty easy to use  includes samples and useful documentation    The most work was setting up the  hardware  the code accesses so I could unit module test effectively   After that it s easy to add new unit test cases   As mentioned previously it is a C C   unit test framework   So you will need a C   compiler   CxxTest User Guide CxxTest Wiki

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First  look here  http   en wikipedia org wiki List of unit testing frameworks C  My company has a C library our customers use   We use CxxTest  a C   unit test library  to  test the code   CppUnit will also work   If you re stuck in C  I d recommend RCUNIT  but CUnit is good too

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Google has excellent testing framework  https   github com google googletest blob master googletest docs primer md  And yes  as far as I see it will work with plain C  i e  doesn t require C   features  may require C   compiler  not sure

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One unit testing framework in C is Check  a list of unit testing frameworks in C can be found here and is reproduced below   Depending on how many standard library functions your runtime has  you may or not be able to use one of those   AceUnit AceUnit  Advanced C and Embedded Unit  bills itself as a comfortable C code unit test framework  It tries to mimick JUnit 4 x and includes reflection-like capabilities  AceUnit can be used in resource constraint environments  e g  embedded software development  and importantly it runs fine in environments where you cannot include a single standard header file and cannot invoke a single standard C function from the ANSI   ISO C libraries  It also has a Windows port  It does not use forks to trap signals  although the authors have expressed interest in adding such a feature  See the AceUnit homepage  GNU Autounit Much along the same lines as Check  including forking to run unit tests in a separate address space  in fact  the original author of Check borrowed the idea from GNU Autounit   GNU Autounit uses GLib extensively  which means that linking and such need special options  but this may not be a big problem to you  especially if you are already using GTK or GLib  See the GNU Autounit homepage  cUnit Also uses GLib  but does not fork to protect the address space of unit tests  CUnit Standard C  with plans for a Win32 GUI implementation  Does not currently fork or otherwise protect the address space of unit tests  In early development  See the CUnit homepage  CuTest A simple framework with just one  c and one  h file that you drop into your source tree  See the CuTest homepage  CppUnit The premier unit testing framework for C    you can also use it to test C code  It is stable  actively developed  and has a GUI interface  The primary reasons not to use CppUnit for C are first that it is quite big  and second you have to write your tests in C    which means you need a C   compiler  If these don   t sound like concerns  it is definitely worth considering  along with other C   unit testing frameworks  See the CppUnit homepage  embUnit embUnit  Embedded Unit  is another unit test framework for embedded systems  This one appears to be superseded by AceUnit  Embedded Unit homepage  MinUnit A minimal set of macros and that   s it  The point is to show how easy it is to unit test your code  See the MinUnit homepage  CUnit for Mr  Ando A CUnit implementation that is fairly new  and apparently still in early development  See the CUnit for Mr  Ando homepage  This list was last updated in March 2008   More frameworks  CMocka CMocka is a test framework for C with support for mock objects  It s easy to use and setup  See the CMocka homepage  Criterion Criterion is a cross-platform C unit testing framework supporting automatic test registration  parameterized tests  theories  and that can output to multiple formats  including TAP and JUnit XML  Each test is run in its own process  so signals and crashes can be reported or tested if needed  See the Criterion homepage for more information  HWUT HWUT is a general Unit Test tool with great support for C  It can help to create Makefiles  generate massive test cases coded in minimal  iteration tables   walk along state machines  generate C-stubs and more  The general approach is pretty unique  Verdicts are based on  good stdout bad stdout   The comparison function  though  is flexible  Thus  any type of script may be used for checking  It may be applied to any language that can produce standard output  See the HWUT homepage  CGreen A modern  portable  cross-language unit testing and mocking framework for C and C    It offers an optional BDD notation  a mocking library  the ability to run it in a single process  to make debugging easier   A test runner which discover automatically the test functions is available  But you can create your own programmatically  All those features  and more  are explained in the CGreen manual  Wikipedia gives a detailed list of C unit testing frameworks under List of unit testing frameworks  C

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If you are familiar with JUnit then I recommend CppUnit   http   cppunit sourceforge net cppunit-wiki  That is assuming you have c   compiler to do the unit tests  if not then I have to agree with Adam Rosenfield that check is what you want

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Google has excellent testing framework  https   github com google googletest blob master googletest docs primer md  And yes  as far as I see it will work with plain C  i e  doesn t require C   features  may require C   compiler  not sure

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One technique to use is to develop the unit test code with a C   xUnit framework  and C   compiler   while maintaining the source for the target system as C modules   Make sure you regularly compile your C source under your cross-compiler  automatically with your unit tests if possible

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I say almost the same as ratkok but if you have a embedded twist to the unit tests then    Unity - Highly recommended framework for unit testing C code   include  lt unity h gt   void test true should be true void        TEST ASSERT TRUE true      int main void        UNITY BEGIN        RUN TEST test true should be true       return UNITY END       The examples in the book that is mentioned in this thread TDD for embedded C are written using Unity  and CppUTest

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I m surprised that no one mentioned Cutter  http   cutter sourceforge net   You can test C and C    it seamlessly integrates with autotools and has a really nice tutorial available

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