Using `native` platform with esp-idf for testing

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Is it possible to use espidf with the native platform when running tests?

I’m creating some tests with test_build_src = yes and would like to test code using data types from esp-idf (like esp_err_t). Currently, I can only get tests to work on the embedded device. If I try running it natively, I get a compilation error:

    1 | #include <esp_log.h>
      |          ^~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.
*** [.pio/build/native/src/ui/led.o] Error 1
src/ui/button.c:1:10: fatal error: esp_log.h: No such file or directory

I’ve also tried adding framework = espidf to my platformio.ini, but this would require me to include a board too.

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This is probably an architecture question. We have our code split so that as much as possible is “core” and doesn’t call any microprocessor-specific code at all. Instead, it uses interfaces to adapters which are in a separate lib to interact with the processor.
The core code can be tested natively, and you pass in a fake whenever the core code accesses an adapter.

Obviously the processor-specific code must be tested on-chip, but that’s surprisingly little.

Doing this makes testing of core code lovely and easy - you can pass-on fakes that do whatever you want to simulate. And they’re much quicker of course (though unity remains slow compared to most unit-test frameworks).

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yep, i’ve done the same and have the same conclusions:

  • split code into multiple libs and envs
  • test as much as you can as “plain old c++”, without framework baggage
  • unity is sloooooooow
  • PIO’s including all lib’s files, instead of loading just the specified ones, makes it even slower