This page discusses the design of new Google Mock features.
# Macros for Defining Actions #
## Problem ##
Due to the lack of closures in C++, it currently requires some
non-trivial effort to define a custom action in Google Mock. For
example, suppose you want to "increment the value pointed to by the
second argument of the mock function and return it", you could write:
```cpp
intIncrementArg1(Unused,int*p,Unused){
return++(*p);
}
...WillOnce(Invoke(IncrementArg1));
```
There are several things unsatisfactory about this approach:
* Even though the action only cares about the second argument of the mock function, its definition needs to list other arguments as dummies. This is tedious.
* The defined action is usable only in mock functions that takes exactly 3 arguments - an unnecessary restriction.
* To use the action, one has to say `Invoke(IncrementArg1)`, which isn't as nice as `IncrementArg1()`.
The latter two problems can be overcome using `MakePolymorphicAction()`,
Note that we have to pick different suffixes (`Action`, `ActionP`,
`ActionP2`, and etc) for actions with different numbers of parameters,
or the action definitions cannot be overloaded on the number of
parameters.
## When to Use ##
While the new macros are very convenient, please also consider other
means of implementing actions (e.g. via `ActionInterface` or
`MakePolymorphicAction()`), especially if you need to use the defined
action a lot. While the other approaches require more work, they give
you more control on the types of the mock function arguments and the
action parameters, which in general leads to better compiler error
messages that pay off in the long run. They also allow overloading
actions based on parameter types, as opposed to just the number of
parameters.
## Related Work ##
As you may have realized, the `ACTION*` macros resemble closures (also
known as lambda expressions or anonymous functions). Indeed, both of
them seek to lower the syntactic overhead for defining a function.
C++0x will support lambdas, but they are not part of C++ right now.
Some non-standard libraries (most notably BLL or Boost Lambda Library)
try to alleviate this problem. However, they are not a good choice
for defining actions as:
* They are non-standard and not widely installed. Google Mock only depends on standard libraries and `tr1::tuple`, which is part of the new C++ standard and comes with gcc 4+. We want to keep it that way.
* They are not trivial to learn.
* They will become obsolete when C++0x's lambda feature is widely supported. We don't want to make our users use a dying library.
* Since they are based on operators, they are rather ad hoc: you cannot use statements, and you cannot pass the lambda arguments to a function, for example.
* They have subtle semantics that easily confuses new users. For example, in expression `_1++ + foo++`, `foo` will be incremented only once where the expression is evaluated, while `_1` will be incremented every time the unnamed function is invoked. This is far from intuitive.
`ACTION*` avoid all these problems.
## Future Improvements ##
There may be a need for composing `ACTION*` definitions (i.e. invoking
another `ACTION` inside the definition of one `ACTION*`). We are not
sure we want it yet, as one can get a similar effect by putting
`ACTION` definitions in function templates and composing the function
templates. We'll revisit this based on user feedback.
The reason we don't allow `ACTION*()` inside a function body is that
the current C++ standard doesn't allow function-local types to be used
to instantiate templates. The upcoming C++0x standard will lift this
restriction. Once this feature is widely supported by compilers, we
can revisit the implementation and add support for using `ACTION*()`
inside a function.
C++0x will also support lambda expressions. When they become
available, we may want to support using lambdas as actions.
# Macros for Defining Matchers #
Once the macros for defining actions are implemented, we plan to do
the same for matchers:
```cpp
MATCHER(name){statements;}
```
where you can refer to the value being matched as `arg`. For example,
given:
```cpp
MATCHER(IsPositive){returnarg>0;}
```
you can use `IsPositive()` as a matcher that matches a value iff it is
greater than 0.
We will also add `MATCHER_P`, `MATCHER_P2`, and etc for parameterized
As any non-trivial software system, Google Mock has some known limitations and problems. We are working on improving it, and welcome your help! The follow is a list of issues we know about.
## README contains outdated information on Google Mock's compatibility with other testing frameworks ##
The `README` file in release 1.1.0 still says that Google Mock only works with Google Test. Actually, you can configure Google Mock to work with any testing framework you choose.
## Tests failing on machines using Power PC CPUs (e.g. some Macs) ##
`gmock_output_test` and `gmock-printers_test` are known to fail with Power PC CPUs. This is due to portability issues with these tests, and is not an indication of problems in Google Mock itself. You can safely ignore them.
## Failed to resolve libgtest.so.0 in tests when built against installed Google Test ##
This only applies if you manually built and installed Google Test, and then built a Google Mock against it (either explicitly, or because gtest-config was in your path post-install). In this situation, Libtool has a known issue with certain systems' ldconfig setup:
This requires a manual run of "sudo ldconfig" after the "sudo make install" for Google Test before any binaries which link against it can be executed. This isn't a bug in our install, but we should at least have documented it or hacked a work-around into our install. We should have one of these solutions in our next release.