CMake exclude tests in subdirectories

Question

I have a c++ project which includes libevent library. Project structure:

.
|_ CMakeLists.txt
|_ Makefile
|_ src
| |_ my_lib.cpp
|_ test
| |_ my_lib_test.cpp
|_ lib
  |_ libevent
    |_ CMakeLists.txt
    |_ ...

When I build and run my tests, libevent tests are also executed. How can I exclude them and run only my own tests?

Answer 1

There is also a more general way to do it. Add a file named CTestCustom.cmake to your source tree and add a list of tests that you want CTest not to run:

set(CTEST_CUSTOM_TESTS_IGNORE
   test1
   ....
   testN
)

Than copy this file to the build directory where tests are executed:

configure_file(${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/CTestCustom.cmake ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR})

This will make CTest ignore the listed tests. See this for more info.

Answer 2

Looking at the available options in libevent's CMakeLists.txt file, it appears that you can disable these pretty easily by setting EVENT__DISABLE_TESTS to ON.

You can either do this in your own CMakeLists.txt before libevent is included:

set(EVENT__DISABLE_TESTS ON)
...
add_subdirectory(lib/libevent)

or when you invoke CMake on the command line:

cmake . -DEVENT__DISABLE_TESTS=ON