CodeItNow

I’ve just uploaded a sample project for MockItNow to Google Code. Get it here.

This file includes the Examples project, the latest version of MockItNow, and UnitTest++. The projects are provided in Visual Studio 2005 format, and should compile out of the box.

Please note that this is a slightly modified version of UnitTest++, since the current release doesn’t catch std::exception in all cases. I’m going to work with Charles at some point to integrate these changes back into the main branch of UnitTest++.

I’ve provided three configurations for the Examples project: Debug, Release and Final. Debug and Release configurations both run the unit tests, but Final has optimizations turned on, and so does not run the tests.

If you’re just interested in seeing what the the test code looks like when using MockItNow, you can browse the example file.

Enjoy!

This is the first in a short series of articles I’m going to write about the way MockItNow works. I’m going to start off with something pretty meaty: How does MockItNow intercept the function calls and redirect them?

I tried a few ways of intercepting function calls and recording their parameters, and maybe one day I’ll explain ways not to do it, but for now, read on if you’re interested in how it works at the moment.

Read more

I finally took the plunge to set up my own website! I’ve been wanting to do this for a while to be able to share some of the things that have interested me as I spend my spare time writing a small game engine. I hope that someone somewhere finds these things interesting!

One other reason that I set up the site is to have central place to store information about a couple of small pieces of software I wrote: DoItNow and MockItNow.

DoItNow is a little addin for Visual Studio 2005 that I use both at work and at home to speed certain parts of the development process up. It’s like Visual Assist, but not as good, and freer.

MockItNow is a C++ mocking framework. If you write unit tests in C#, then you have probably tried out using something like RhinoMocks, or maybe TypeMock. There isn’t much choice in C++, so I wanted to see if I could write something.

MockItNow was a great venture into the unknown for me. I wasn’t at all sure that I would be able to pull it off at the start. In fact, I had two failed attempts (based on ludicrous ideas) before I landed on what I use now. Along the way I learned a lot about areas I’d never looked at in great detail before, like stack frames, x86 assembly, calling conventions, type traits… The list goes on and on. I also learned some nasty little tricks that you can do in order to get at certain pieces of information I needed along the way too. I wouldn’t recommend using some of these techniques, but I had to do what I had to do.

I’ll be providing some more of the gritty details about how MockItNow works over the coming weeks, but If you can’t wait, then feel free to download it and take a look.

The site’s still a bit of a work in progress at the moment, but I set myself the goal of getting something up this weekend, so here I am. Unfortunately the great weather stole a lot of my time, but be sure that I’ll be improving things as I learn more!