Every test suite begins with either describe or describe_a.

describe

Describes have the form of:

describe example_spec("An example", $ { });

Each describe is a global instance of the Description class, the name of the spec being the name of the global variable that the test is contained in.

In conventional C++14, after macro-expansion the above snippet would be written as:

Description example_spec("An example", [](&self auto) { });

The Description constructor takes two arguments: a string, and a lambda. For simplicity's sake, any lambdas passed to any C++Spec functions are referred to as "blocks", as the capture-list and arguments of the lambda are effectively never seen.

describe_a

A describe_a is more complex than describe.

Unlike describe which creates instances of Description, describe_a creates instances of ClassDescription. ClassDescription is a template class, where the template's type variable is used to specialize the description and create a subject available to all statements in the description. The subject is available via the subject keyword.

template <typename T>
class ClassDescription : public Description { ... };

Also unlike describe, there are two forms of describe_a: one where the subject is explicit, and another where it is implied.

Explicit subject describe_a

An explicit describe_a has the subject passed into it as the first argument if there is no provided description, or after the description if there is one.

For example:

describe_a <TestClass> tc_spec(TestClass(arg1, arg2), $ { ... });

and

describe_an <AnotherTestClass> atc_spec
    ("The class AnotherTest class", AnotherTestClass(args...), $ { ... });

Implied subject describe_a

describe_a <YetAnotherTestClass> yatc_spec( $ { ... });

With an implied subject, the default constructor of the templated class is called to create the subject.