Testing
Catch2 support

Catch2 support

Last modified: 18 January 2023

Catch (Catch2) is a header-only testing framework.

tip
Learn about the framework specifics in the Catch2 section of our Unit Testing Tutorial.

Adding Catch to your project

Follow the instructions in this guide to start with Catch using its CMake integration.

Catch run/debug configuration

To create a Catch configuration, go to Run | Edit Configurations, click and select Catch from the list of templates.
Specify the configuration settings:
- Set the configuration name in the Name field. This name will be shown in the list of the available run/debug configurations.
- Select the Tags/Test option to run a test for the particular tags or all the tags. Select the Pattern option to run all the tests for a particular pattern.
- Specify tags in the Tags fields. This field is available only when the Tags/Test option is selected.
- Select the desired test from the Test list. This option is available only when one or more tags have been provided.
- Specify the pattern name in the Pattern field. This field is available only when the Pattern option is selected.
- In the Target field, select the desired target from the list of available targets.
Save the configuration, and it's ready for running or debugging .

note
Instead of editing a single configuration, you can modify the Catch template itself. In this case, the settings you specify will apply as defaults to all new configurations of this type.

Running tests

In CLion, there are several ways to start a run/debug session for tests, one of which is using special gutter icons. These icons help quickly run or debug a single test or a whole suite/fixture:

Gutter icons also show test results (when already available): success or failure .

When you run a test/suite/fixture using gutter icons, CLion creates a temporary Catch configuration, which is greyed out in the configurations list. To save a temporary configuration, select it in the Edit Configurations dialog and press :

Exploring results

When you run tests, CLion shows the results and the process in the built-in test runner window. The test tree shows all the tests while they are being executed one by one. The test runner window includes:

progress bar with the percentage of tests executed so far,
tree view of all the running tests with their status and duration,
tests' output stream,
toolbar with the options to rerun failed tests, export or open previous results saved automatically , sort the tests alphabetically to easily find a particular test, or sort them by duration to understand which test ran longer than others.