Transitioning from JUnit to C Unit Testing in Embedded Development

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I’ve been working with C unit testing frameworks for about six years now. Recently, I started using the CuTest framework for C unit testing, and it’s been a game-changer for me, especially in embedded systems. You can check it out here: CuTest homepage.

It’s ideal for embedded systems due to its lightweight and simple nature. I had no issues running it on both the target platform and the desktop. Here’s what you need to do:

  1. Include a header file wherever you call CuTest routines.
  2. Compile/link a single additional C file into the image.
  3. Add some simple code to main to set up and call the unit tests. This can be in a special main() function compiled if UNITTEST is defined during the build.

The system needs to support a heap and some stdio functionality, but the code is simple enough to work around these requirements if necessary. With extern "C" {} blocks, it also supports testing C++ code.