Adding Google Test Project to a Project's GitHub Repo

[rjwignar]

I've been able to use Google Test to test a C++ program of mine, following Microsoft's instructions for Google Test in Visual Studio
The program is developed in Visual Studio 2022 and does not use CMake.

I want to include the Google Test project to my program's GitHub repository so contributors can also use Google Test for testing.
Since Google Test requires its own Visual Studio project, my C++ program and Google Test exist in different solution folders.

Is there a suggested way to add the Google Test Visual Studio project to my repo?

[rjwignar]

After some experimenting I think I found a way to do this.
I'll add more screenshots at a later time, but I hope this will suffice for now.
I first created a Google Test project in a separate folder. I then copied the following files into my program's project folder:

Note: If your original project - let's call it targetProgramName already has a packages or Packages folder, instead of copying gTestProgramName/packages.config , you will likely have to instead add the contents of gTestProgramName/packages.config to targetProgramName/packages.config.
gTestProgramName/packages.config will only contain the Google Test package, so just copy that line into the packages element of targetProgramName/packages.config. The line will look something like:

  <package id="Microsoft.googletest.v140.windesktop.msvcstl.static.rt-dyn" version="1.8.1.7" targetFramework="native" />

Open targetProgramName.sln in Visual Studio 2022, and right-click Solution 'targetProgramName' -> Add -> Existing Project... -> targetProgramName/gTestProgramName.vcxproj

Next, to the gTestProgramName project in your solution, you should add a reference to targetProgramName.
(After playing around, it seems the reference is no longer necessary after copying gTestProgramName.vcxproj to the target program directory).

Please note at this point the selected files above will have been copied into the targetProgramName folder. However, in the Visual Studio Solution, the source code references in files (pch.cpp, pch.h, test.cpp) under the gTestProgramName project will refer to the original files in gTestProgramName/ and not the copies in targetProgramName/. You must fix this by first removing pch.cpp, pch.h, and test.cpp from the gTestProgramName project, then add targetProgramName/pch.cpp, targetProgramName/pch.h, and targetProgramName/test.cpp instead.

Doing the above step is important in order to import your project source code files into test.cpp using relative paths (useful since contributors won't have your absolute paths).

Doing all these steps have allowed me to add Google Test to my project repository in such a way that future contributors can use Google Test:

• The Google Test dependencies (and other packages) can be restored using NuGet Package Restore
• Contributors won't have to fiddle with absolute paths in the test.cpp "#include" directives