Google Test VS doctest

Compare Google Test vs doctest and see what are their differences.

Google Test

GoogleTest - Google Testing and Mocking Framework (by google)

doctest

The fastest feature-rich C++11/14/17/20/23 single-header testing framework (by doctest)
CodeRabbit: AI Code Reviews for Developers
Revolutionize your code reviews with AI. CodeRabbit offers PR summaries, code walkthroughs, 1-click suggestions, and AST-based analysis. Boost productivity and code quality across all major languages with each PR.
coderabbit.ai
featured
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews
SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
www.saashub.com
featured
Google Test doctest
71 20
35,395 6,089
0.7% 1.0%
6.4 0.0
6 days ago 2 months ago
C++ C++
BSD 3-clause "New" or "Revised" License MIT License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

Google Test

Posts with mentions or reviews of Google Test. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-11-24.
  • The Two Factions of C++
    15 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Nov 2024
    > Googletest ... declares a direct dependency on an older LTS release of absl

    Looking at the build configuration code:

    https://github.com/google/googletest/blob/main/CMakeLists.tx...

    it seems like the dependence on Abseil is optional. i.e. you can use googltest on its own. I wouldn't recommend it (I kinda like doctest), but still.

  • Getting started with GoogleTest and CMake
    1 project | dev.to | 11 Aug 2024
    include(FetchContent) # Fetch GoogleTest FetchContent_Declare( googletest GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/google/googletest.git GIT_TAG release-1.11.0 ) FetchContent_MakeAvailable(googletest) # Collect C++ source files recursively file(GLOB_RECURSE CXX_FILES "${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/*.cpp") add_executable(unit_tests ${CXX_FILES}) # Link GoogleTest libraries target_link_libraries(unit_tests PRIVATE gtest_main ${PROJECT_NAME}_lib # Link to the main project library ) # Include directories (including where GoogleTest is built) target_include_directories(unit_tests PRIVATE ${gtest_SOURCE_DIR}/include) # Add include directories for tests to find headers target_include_directories(unit_tests PRIVATE ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/src) # Enable testing and discover tests # Discover and run tests include(GoogleTest) gtest_discover_tests(unit_tests)
  • Open Source C++ Stack
    10 projects | dev.to | 16 Jul 2024
    Google Test
  • Creating k-NN with C++ (from Scratch)
    6 projects | dev.to | 11 Jan 2024
    cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5) project(knn_cpp CXX) include(FetchContent) FetchContent_Declare( googletest GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/google/googletest.git GIT_TAG release-1.11.0 ) FetchContent_MakeAvailable(googletest) FetchContent_Declare(matplotplusplus GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/alandefreitas/matplotplusplus GIT_TAG origin/master) FetchContent_GetProperties(matplotplusplus) if(NOT matplotplusplus_POPULATED) FetchContent_Populate(matplotplusplus) add_subdirectory(${matplotplusplus_SOURCE_DIR} ${matplotplusplus_BINARY_DIR} EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL) endif() function(knn_cpp_test TEST_NAME TEST_SOURCE) add_executable(${TEST_NAME} ${TEST_SOURCE}) target_link_libraries(${TEST_NAME} PUBLIC matplot) aux_source_directory(${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/../lib LIB_SOURCES) target_link_libraries(${TEST_NAME} PRIVATE gtest gtest_main gmock gmock_main) target_include_directories(${TEST_NAME} PRIVATE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/../) target_sources(${TEST_NAME} PRIVATE ${LIB_SOURCES} ) include(GoogleTest) gtest_discover_tests(${TEST_NAME}) endfunction() knn_cpp_test(LinearAlgebraTest la_test.cc) knn_cpp_test(KnnTest knn_test.cc) knn_cpp_test(UtilsTest utils_test.cc)
  • Starting with C
    2 projects | dev.to | 1 Jan 2024
    Okay, time to start unit tests!!! We will use Unity Test Framework to do unit testing. It is one of widely used testing frameworks alongside with Check, Google Test etc. Just downloading source code, and putting it to the project folder is enough to make it work (that is also why it is portable).
  • Just in case: Debian Bookworm comes with a buggy GCC
    1 project | dev.to | 15 Dec 2023
    Updating GCC (it happened to GoogleTest).
  • Automatically run tests, formatters & linters with CI!
    5 projects | dev.to | 15 Nov 2023
    Roy's project uses Google Test, a C++ testing framework. His testing setup is similar to mine as we both keep source files in one directory and tests in another. The key difference is that I can run the tests using the Visual Studios run button. It was fairly easy to write the new tests as there were existing ones that I could reference to check the syntax!
  • C++ Unit Testing Using Google Test - My Experience
    3 projects | dev.to | 12 Nov 2023
    The Google Test Documentation provides a primer for first-time users. The primer introduces some basic concepts and terminology, some of which I've been able to learn for this lab exercise.
  • Basic C++ Unit Testing with GTest, CMake, and Submodules
    2 projects | dev.to | 26 Sep 2023
    > git submodule add https://github.com/google/googletest.git > git submodule update --init --recursive
  • VS code + cmake + gtest?
    1 project | /r/vscode | 3 Sep 2023
    cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.14) project(my_project) # GoogleTest requires at least C++14 set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 14) set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_REQUIRED ON) include(FetchContent) FetchContent_Declare( googletest URL https://github.com/google/googletest/archive/03597a01ee50ed33e9dfd640b249b4be3799d395.zip ) # For Windows: Prevent overriding the parent project's compiler/linker settings set(gtest_force_shared_crt ON CACHE BOOL "" FORCE) FetchContent_MakeAvailable(googletest) enable_testing() add_executable( hello_test hello_test.cpp ) target_link_libraries( hello_test GTest::gtest_main ) include(GoogleTest) gtest_discover_tests(hello_test)

doctest

Posts with mentions or reviews of doctest. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-11-24.
  • The Two Factions of C++
    15 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Nov 2024
    catch2 has become fairly bloated. doctest takes all of the best parts of catch2 without all the bloat and the end result is a test framework that is literally over 10x faster than catch2. It's also like 90% compatible with catch2 so porting your tests to it is pretty easy.

    Especially if you have a build process that always runs your unit tests, it's nice to have a very fast test/compile/debug loop.

    https://github.com/doctest/doctest

  • Unit testing tool suggestions
    2 projects | /r/learnprogramming | 7 May 2023
    I have never used "tools" for unit-tests, only web sites that show the results of the tests or code coverage. For C++ I prefer https://github.com/doctest/doctest but most companies I worked for use Catch2.
  • Question about Doctest.h
    1 project | /r/learnprogramming | 5 Feb 2023
    Do the README and tutorial not explain it well enough? It's a framework for automated unit testing.
  • Doctest – C++ Testing Framework
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 4 Feb 2023
  • Memory Safety in the D Programming Language (Part 2 of N)
    2 projects | /r/programming | 8 Oct 2022
    This is, honestly, super easy to get going. Nowadays you have a ton of libraries and more-than-decent build systems. With Meson/CMake and Conan/Vcpkg I can set up a project with testing in 3 minutes. Also, I think that at the end of the day you want your tests to live somewhere else. But if you want to embed them, you also have https://github.com/doctest/doctest.
  • how can I improve my connect4 board class?
    1 project | /r/cpp_questions | 28 May 2022
    Write some tests. They can find bugs early and give you confidence that your code works so far. That doesn't have to be anything fancy, e.g. with doctest:
  • Testing framework Catch2 3.0 final released
    3 projects | /r/cpp | 17 May 2022
    Keep in mind https://github.com/doctest/doctest/issues/554. Also, doctest lacks: - Matchers - Data generators - Benchmarking - ...
  • Check if my code meets the requirements?
    1 project | /r/learnprogramming | 30 Mar 2022
    Your requirements can easily simulated on paper (like increase the speed once, twice, ...), then translated to unit-tests with a framework like https://github.com/doctest/doctest.
  • The Lisp Curse
    11 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 25 Mar 2022
  • C++17 python like print function
    4 projects | /r/embedded | 9 Mar 2022
    For stuff like this which is very easy to test (very predefined input vs output), I highly suggest using some testing framework. Catch2 is great, but there is also doctest and good ole googletest. If you do this, it would also be a great intro to CI, where you do some plumbing on github or gitlab where every commit causes a build to happen on their servers and run through the unit tests, and if it passes it gets merged into master.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Google Test and doctest you can also consider the following projects:

Catch - A modern, C++-native, test framework for unit-tests, TDD and BDD - using C++14, C++17 and later (C++11 support is in v2.x branch, and C++03 on the Catch1.x branch)

CppUTest - CppUTest unit testing and mocking framework for C/C++

Google Mock

CppUnit - C++ port of JUnit

Unity Test API - Simple Unit Testing for C

Boost.Test - The reference C++ unit testing framework (TDD, xUnit, C++03/11/14/17)

benchmark - A microbenchmark support library

UnitTest++ - A lightweight unit testing framework for C++

CodeRabbit: AI Code Reviews for Developers
Revolutionize your code reviews with AI. CodeRabbit offers PR summaries, code walkthroughs, 1-click suggestions, and AST-based analysis. Boost productivity and code quality across all major languages with each PR.
coderabbit.ai
featured
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews
SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
www.saashub.com
featured

Did you know that C++ is
the 7th most popular programming language
based on number of references?