BOOST_GLOBAL_FIXTURE(name) declares a global fixture that is constructed before executing any test cases and is destroyed after executing all test cases. If more than one global fixture is defined in a single source file, the fixtures are constructed in the order they appear in the source file and destroyed in the reverse order. If global fixtures are defined in multiple source files, the order in which global fixtures are initialized between source files is implementation dependent.

Because global fixtures are not created and destroyed for each test case, they represent shared state that prevents test cases from executing independently from each other. For this reason, test case fixtures created with BOOST_FIXTURE_TEST_CASE and test suite fixtures created with BOOST_FIXTURE_TEST_SUITE are preferred over global fixtures.

struct global_fixture
{
    global_fixture()
    {
        std::cout << "global setup\n";
    }
    ~global_fixture()
    {
        std::cout << "global teardown\n";
    }
};

BOOST_GLOBAL_FIXTURE(global_fixture);

Example Source Code