Automated tests often need to load some data from external files.
Currently, a wide variety of approaches for this have been used in Qt
autotests, including:
- embed the source directory into the test binary at compile time, and
find the testdata relative to that; this fails when the source tree
is no longer available (e.g. when the tests are deployed to a device).
- use a path relative to the current working directory, and trust that
the caller always sets the current working directory such that the
testdata can be found; this fails when the caller uses a different
working directory than expected.
- use a path relative to QCoreApplication::applicationDirPath();
this fails when source tree != build tree (since testdata is not
automatically copied into the build tree).
- compile the files into the binary using the Qt resource system; this
should work, but does not allow for testing of code which genuinely
needs external files.
It seems that there is not a simple method for determining the testdata
path which can be reliably used in all circumstances, so various tests
have reinvented the testdata location method in different ways.
Therefore, this is a good candidate for an addition to the testlib API.
The current implementation of QFINDTESTDATA is able to find testdata
in all three of (build tree, install tree, source tree), in that order.
Change-Id: Ib2fed860723ccf437240da3b00db22dfe1a6b56c
Reviewed-by: Jason McDonald <jason.mcdonald@nokia.com>
