Catch3's own property engine, independent of RapidCheck, next to the
existing CheckProperty API, which stays unchanged.
Strategies (Progmasoft/Catch3/Strategy/): a Strategy<T> builds a value
from a ChoiceSource, a stream of integer choices where 0 is always the
simplest decision. Gen:: provides Integers, Booleans, Floats (ranges,
NaN and infinities on request, edge values), Characters, Strings,
Utf8Strings, Vectors, UniqueVectors, Sets, Maps, Optionals, Tuples,
Construct, Permutations, Just, SampledFrom, OneOf, Frequency, Lazy and
Recursive; every strategy has Map, Filter and FlatMap.
Shrinking: the engine records the choices of a failing trial and
shrinks them, not the value, with deletion and zeroing of blocks,
binary search per choice with a neighbour step for non-monotone
conditions, sorting and moving value between neighbours. Replaying the
shrunk choices through the same strategies means mapped, filtered,
dependent and stateful inputs all shrink, and a shrunk input still
satisfies its filters.
ForAll([options,] strategy..., body) runs the trials (size rising over
the first half), then a targeted search when the body calls Target,
then checks Cover requirements. A failure report carries the
minimized input, the notes and a replay token (PropertyOptions::Replay)
that runs exactly that input. An example database (DatabasePath or
CATCH3_PROPERTY_DATABASE) replays stored failures first and drops them
once they pass. Bodies return bool, or void with CATCH3_PROPERTY_ASSERT
and CATCH3_PROPERTY_ASSUME, which return instead of throwing; Note,
Classify, Cover and Target record into a per-thread trial record.
CATCH3_CHECK_FOR_ALL and CATCH3_REQUIRE_FOR_ALL report through Catch2
and name the property after the test case for the database.
CheckStateful runs model-based command sequences against a model and
the system under test; preconditions and state-dependent arguments are
replayed during shrinking. Relations.hpp provides Equivalent
(differential), Metamorphic, RoundTrip and Idempotent bodies.
PropertyOptions, PropertyStatus, PropertyFailure and PropertyResult
gain fields and statuses at their ends (kInsufficientCoverage,
kGaveUp); existing designated initializers and reports are unchanged.
The engine's untemplated parts are compiled in ChoiceShrinker.cpp,
PropertyEngine.cpp and Context.cpp, and every build system (Bazel,
CMake, Meson, Xmake, Premake) lists the new files and tests.
Docs: progmasoft-properties.md describes the engine,
progmasoft-roadmap.md the steps that follow (the standalone catch3
runner, mocking, per-test coverage, change-impact selection and
prioritization, mutation testing, guided test generation). The
.clang-format comment names Progmasoft C++ Style instead of Visual X#.
Verified with clang-cl 23 through CMake: ProgmasoftSelfTest passes, 57
test cases and 75,461 assertions, including the shrinking results
(1001 for x <= 1000, { 10 }, { 0, 0, 0 } through FlatMap, 102 through
a filter, { 0, 100 } for two arguments, four push(0) steps for a
queue that drops its fourth element, { 0, 0 } for a sort that loses
duplicates) and the database, replay, coverage and discard behaviour.