I am writing a unit-test suite for a source code library that contains static_asserts.
I want to provide assurance these static_asserts do no more and no less than they
are desired to do, in design terms. So I would like to be able to test them.
I could of course add uncompilable unit tests of the interface that cause the static asserts
to be violated by a comprehensive variety of means, and comment or #if 0 them all out, with my personal
assurance to the user that if any of them are un-commented then they will observe
that the library does not compile.
But that would be rather ridiculous. Instead, I would like to have
some apparatus that would, in the context of the unit-test suite, replace
a static_assert with an equivalently provoked runtime exception, that the
test framework could catch and report in effect: This code would have static_asserted
in a real build.
Am I overlooking some glaring reason why this would be a daft idea?
If not, how might it be done? Macro apparatus is an obvious approach and I don't rule it out. But maybe also, and preferably, with a template specialization or SFINAE approach?