boost unit tests with xUnit Plugin in Jenkins do not work

The error is is because there is no output file generated by boost::test. The test script need to be invoked with the correct options:

unit_test --report_level=detailed --report_format=xml 2> xunit.xml

Unfortunately the XML output file produced by boost::test is not in the correct format (see: SO Converting boost::test logs & Boost Users Help with XUnit plugin )

The JUnit plugin expects XML test output to be in the following format:

<testsuites>  <testsuite time="0.0000" timestamp="0.000" errors="0" failures="0" tests="13" hostname="localhost" name="my_test_suite">    <testcase id="65536" class="test" name="test_case_1" time="0.0000" />    <testcase id="65537" class="test" name="test_case_2" time="0.0000" />    <testcase id="65538" class="test" name="test_case_3" time="0.0000" />  </testsuite></testsuites>

There are a couple of ways to resolve this such as:

1. Converting the XML output by boost::test
2. Directly customising the output of boost::test so that the correct format is produced.

I opted for option 2 - ss you are not a 'C/C++' programmer you could get the author of the test suites you are trying to run to follow this approach, the steps below should help get them started:

1. Create a test visitor for post processing the results of the test run.
2. Create a BOOST_GLOBAL_FIXTURE class that walks through the test results in its destructor to output the test results in the correct format.
3. Instantiate the fixture class in the main test module.

i.e.:

struct JUnitVisitor : public boost::unit_test::test_tree_visitor{    void visit( boost::unit_test::test_case const& tc )    {        // output <testcase> xml in JUnit format    }    bool test_suite_start( boost::unit_test::test_suite const& ts )    {        // output <testuite> xml in JUnit format    }    void test_suite_finish( boost::unit_test::test_suite const& ts )    {        // output </testuite> xml in JUnit format    }};struct MyJUnitOpFixture{    MyJUnitOpFixture() {}    ~MyJUnitOpFixture()    {        // open results file        /// output <testsuites> start tag        // use a visitor to walk the test results tree               JUnitVisitor visitor ( out );        boost::unit_test::traverse_test_tree(                 boost::unit_test::framework::master_test_suite(),                 visitor                 );        /// output </testsuites> end tag    }}

Then the global fixture is instantiated in the main test file by adding:

BOOST_GLOBAL_FIXTURE( MyJUnitOpFixture ); 

In my case xUnit does not like format of Boost Test's "--report_format=XML" but it DOES take "--log_format=XML --log_sink=test.xml"