cxx11tests

TL;DR

Collection of tests to check which C++11 features are supported by a specific (pre-installed) compiler.

This is work in progress, so check again for new tests and bugfixes.

Intent

The idea was to create a lightweight and easy to use test if one needs to know wether a specific, pre-installed compiler supports certain features of C++11. While most compiler vendors and open-source projects publish a list of features that are supported, some of the lists are out of date, do not show the status for Subversion/Git versions or are incomplete as far as the C++11 features go.

Especially in scientific computing, users are often stuck with whatever compiler and compiler version the vendors of a supercomputer deem to be fit for their machines. This can be very frustrating if a reasarch code is to be ported to C++11, and it is tedious to find out which compilers will still be able to compile the code. For that reason, this test suite was created to give users a straightforward tool for the path to C++11.

Coverage

The following C++11 features are checked (excerpt - for the full list, check out the src/ directory, as all files are named after the feature they are checking):

• C99 features: long long, vararg macros
• alignas, alignof
• auto
• constexpr
• decltype
• default'd, delete'd (member) functions
• final, override
• nullptr
• std::unique_ptr, std::shared_ptr, std::weak_ptr
• alias templates and using as typedef
• default member initialization
• delegating constructors, inheriting constructors
• enums (strongly typed, enum classes)
• generalized functors, std::function, std::bind
• initializer lists
• inline namespaces
• lambdas
• local types as template arguments
• nested template closer
• range-based for
• raw string literals
• rvalue references, move support, perfect forwarding
• static assertions
• tuples
• unicode character types
• unicode string literals
• uniform initialization syntax
• variadic templates
• new header files: array, chrono, condition_variable, forward_list, functional, future, initializer_list, mutex, regex, thread, tuple, unordered_set, unordered_map

Installation & Requirements

The following software packages are needed to run cxx11tests:

• Python 3 (>= 3.3) or Perl > 5.0
• GNU Make
• any C++ compiler

There is no installation necessary, just obtain cxx11tests and you are good to go.

Usage

After downloading (and unpacking, if necessary), enter the cxx11tests directory. To prepare the tests, you need to run either the configure.py script or the configure.plscript once to generate the Makefile that will run the tests. The configure script respects three environment variables that you may use to set the compiler command and any necessary flags:

• CXX: Set this variable to the compiler executable (default: 'g++').
• CPPFLAGS: Use to specify additional preprocessor flags (default: '').
• CXXFLAGS: Use to specify additional compiler flags (default: '').

If you want to check e.g. the currently installed GNU compiler, you could run configure as

CXX=g++ CXXFLAGS=-std=c++11 ./configure.py

or CXX=g++ CXXFLAGS=-std=c++11 ./configure.pl

You may also run the configure script from another directory (out-of-source tests).

After running the configure script, you can run the tests using make. By default, all tests are run. Makefile is using gmake syntax. To start them, just execute

make 

or gmake

and and wait for the tests to finish. Make will not stop after failed tests, but continue until all tests have been run. On subsequent calls to make, only tests that previously failed will be run again. To override this behavior and run all tests regardless of their previous status, run the 'force' target, i.e.

make force

or gmake force

If you want to clean out all previously run tests, call make clean. make distclean will also delete the Makefile, so you will have to run the configure script again (it should leave you with a directory as you hadwhen obtaining cxx11tests.). Note that you do not need to call make distclean if you want to configure a new compiler - configure.py will do that for you. If you want to get a list of all targets you can build, just call make help.

By default, the test results will be colored for easier recognition of failed tests. You can switch of colors by setting the environment variable COLORIZED to '0' (zero), or my calling make with

make COLORIZED=0

or gmake COLORIZED=0

Contributions

Please feel free to add improvements to the test suite. I will be happy to review and add your contributions if you send me a pull request or a patch.