I have a static library of C files, compiled with g++ on Cygwin. I wish to unit test one function that is defined in the library. That function calls another function define
It turns out the reason the linker found both defintions of the function is that the faked function's source file defined a variable which is extern'ed in its header file. That unresolved external in the header file caused the linker to link the faked function's object file (the whole thing) to the tested function's file inside the library. So, it's impossible to extract the definition of the tested function without the definition for the dependency.
What I ended up doing was similar to Override a function call in C where I used a different function name instead of the same one, and a preprocessor directive to swap the two. I put the preprocessor directive and the fake function in a separate file which can be included in a unit test, so the production code in the library does not have to be touched. Plus, if I want to fake that same function for another unit test somewhere else, I can re-use the new file.