Unit testing with boost::statechart

We are using the boost statechart library and have troubles writing unit tests for the code.

In our normal execution the state machine starts in ClosedState:

struct BoostStateMachine : sc::state_machine<BoostStateMachine, ClosedState >

We would like to test a specific state transition without having to traverse the state machine till that state, for example we would like to start the test in AnotherState. The problem is that sc::state_machine is templated on its initial state. Feeding the state machine with all the events that lead to the tested states, usually requires a开发者_运维技巧 lot of work and complicates the tests.

A primitive solution is to write special debug-only event and add it to ClosedState. This event will trigger an immediate transition to AnotherState.

Do you know any other way to accomplish the task?

I'll admit it's not great, but

#ifdef DEBUG
typedef AnotherState StartingState;
#else
typedef ClosedState StartingState;
#endif
struct BoostStateMachine : sc::state_machine<BoostStateMachine, StartingState > {...

EDIT addressing comment

#ifndef INITIAL_STATE
#define INITIAL_STATE ClosedState
#endif
struct BoostStateMachine : sc::state_machine<BoostStateMachine, INITIAL_STATE > {...

of course that means you need to recompile to do each test =[

We could try the following:

typedef<class InitialState>
struct StateMachine : sc::state_machine< typename /*?*/ StateMachine<InitialState>, InitialState > {...}

typedef StateMachine<ClosedState> BoostStateMachine; //default case

#ifdef DO_TESTS
    ...
    StateMachine<AnotherState> astate1;
    ...
    StateMachine<AnotherState2> astate2;
    ...
    StateMachine<AnotherState3> astate3;
    ...
#endif

This of course does not help when it's a substate that needs to start in a different state. But the same thing could apply:

typedef <typename InitialChild>
struct ClosedState : sc::simple_state< ClosedState<InitialChild>, BoostStateMachine, InitialChild > {...};

or something like it. I have done templated states before (so that I could have common sub-state sequences) and it is a royal PITA to debug (more so that the rest of statechart).