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Test Suite Execution Environments

All your sweet, sweet test suite options

Ceedling, Unity, and CMock help you create and run test suites using any of the following approaches. For more on this topic, please see this handy dandy article and/or follow the links for each item listed below.

  1. Native. This option builds and runs code on your host system.
    • In the simplest case this means you are testing code that is intended to run on the same sort of system as the test suite. Your test compiler toolchain is the same as your release compiler toolchain.
    • However, a native build can also mean your test compiler is different than your release compiler. With some thought and effort, code for another platform can be tested on your host system. This is often the best approach for embedded and other specialized development.
  2. Emulator. In this option, you build your test code with your target's toolchain, and then run the test suite using an emulator provided for that target. This is a good option for embedded and other specialized development — if an emulator is available.
  3. On target. The Ceedling bundle of tools can create test suites that run on a target platform directly. Particularly in embedded development — believe it or not — this is often the option of last resort. That is, you should probably go with the other options in this list.