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I've been doing some experiments to find out if it's possible to execute NUnit on a Silverlight project. I knew that Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend both host Silverlight for use in the designer window. It turns out that rather than host a separate instance of the CoreCLR, the designer simply loads the Silverlight assemblies into the host runtime. This simplifies the business of creating a compatible unit testing framework considerably! With a little bit twiddling, I've managed to tweak the 'nunit.framework' assembly so that it's compatible with Silverlight projects. In order for your tests to execute successfully, you also need to ensure that all Silverlight assemblies (except 'mscorlib') are set to 'Copy...

The latest release of TestDriven.Net is now compiled against NUnit 2.4.7 . This version of NUnit includes Andreas Schlapsi 's popular RowTest extension. The RowTest attributes have been moved to the 'nunit.framework.extensions' assembly (which you can find here: \Program Files\TestDriven.NET 2.0\NUnit\2.4\nunit.core.extensions.dll ). Here is an example RowTest method that tests a prime number function: The prime number function might look like this: As you can see the intention of the test is very clear and there is no repetition. I've written more about parameterized unit tests here . Read More...

I've just uploaded a new version of TestDriven.Net with support for Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1. Microsoft have certainly kept me on my toes as there have been lots of changes since Silverlight 1.1. I'm sorry it has taken a while! At the moment you're limited to running individual public methods (ad-hoc tests). If you need to run a suite of tests I recommend you use this in conjunction with the Silverlight Testing Framework that was released at MIX. Jeff Wilcox has posted a detailed tutorial that shows how to use the framework here . When running your tests using 'Test With > Silverlight', bear in mind that you're simply executing the test method and any test attributes ( TestInitialize etc.) will be ignored. I've also...

TestDriven.Net has always supported parameterized test methods when used with the MbUnit testing framework. When using MbUnit, it is common for a single test method to execute multiple tests with different parameter inputs. The most famous of these test types is the MbUnit RowTest . Until now there has been little reason to add support for executing parameterized tests using NUnit (historically NUnit has only supported parameterless test methods). However Andreas Schlapsi has recently written an implementation of MbUnit's RowTest using NUnit 2.4's Addin extensibility mechanism. I've updated TestDriven.Net 2.11 to better support NUnit add-ins and enable the targeting of RowTests and other parameterized test types. This version also includes a...

Over the past year the 'Go To Reflector' command has become a first class citizen inside TestDriven.Net . You will find the 'Go To Reflector' button on many different context menus inside Visual Studio. The ones I use most often during development are the 'Code Context' and 'Project Reference' menus. When I'm debugging I tend to use the 'Call Stack' and 'Modules' context menus. For a long time I've put off attempting to add support for generics to the 'Go To Reflector' command. The Visual Studio CodeModel and StackFrames APIs don't really support generics, so I wasn't even sure if this would be possible. This was becoming a problem with more and more code being written that uses generics. I decided it was time to bite the bullet and see what...

There are a number of new features in TestDriven.Net 2.10 that I want to highlight (apart from the VS 2008 crash workaround ). The one I'm going to focus on here is subtle, but significant I believe - especially for people working with large solutions. Smart build is a new optimization that allows you to skip the build step before test execution when there are no source code changes. Anyone working on a solution with a large number of projects will know how time consuming the build can be before any tests can be executed. Somewhat surprisingly this remains true even when no actual source code edits have been made and nothing needs to be compiled. I've had reports of the build check taking as long as 45 seconds before any tests could be executed...

Now that Visual Studio 2008 RTM is out I have started getting reports of Visual Studio crashing on startup when TestDriven.Net is installed. I was pretty dismayed as TestDriven.Net has included Orcas support since January of this year and this support has been pretty well tested. I certainly wasn't expecting to see any fatal crashes!   It turns out that this crash only happens when the user has opted not to install the 'Code Analysis Tools' feature. This is quite common when someone is doing a minimal install of Visual Studio with just the language feature they need. The issue appears to be related to the Visual Studio command bars. If you simply query for a command bar that doesn't exist, Visual Studio will quit with an error (rather than...

It has been over a month since my last update. I just want to put to rest any rumors of TestDriven.Net 's early demise. With the help of my lawyers , I responded to Microsoft's lawyers ' letter and am now attempting to come to a resolution of the issues. Continuing to play this out on the blogosphere would unnecessarily antagonize the situation and undo the good progress which has been made. To be clear I am not anti-Microsoft. I am simply a passionate advocate of unit testing for developers of all experience levels. To my mind test driven development is like climbing with ropes. Beginner climbers can gain the confidence to climb without the fear of landing in a mess at the bottom. Expert climbers can take on overhangs and other hard problems...

Jamie A comments to an article on Channel Register : Here's a slightly less technical way of looking at the issue: Microsoft essentially have 2 editions of a program. The first edition speaks English (User Interface) to the user, but in behind can speak French (COM) to other components. The second edition also speaks English and French, but can also speak Russian (VSIP - Visual Studio Integration Programme). Microsoft intends that your components speak Russian in order to extend Visual Studio. Their VSIP license agreement also states that you can only try to speak Russian to the second edition of the software. Attempting to speak Russian to the first edition is not allowed (even if it does speak the language). Rather than try and speak Russian...

Today Microsoft kindly extended my deadline by 24 hours so that I could further consult my lawyers. So far they have done a very good job of keeping the pressure on. This isn't simply a case of knocking out a quick email Pirate Bay style ! Before I released support for Visual Studio Express , I made a point of carefully reading the Express EULA. After reading it I was confident that the technique I was using wasn't in breach of the license. I am now acutely aware that if I turn out to be wrong I could end up losing everything . This isn't a situation that any developer wants to find themselves in. Unfortunately the alternative to fighting this is bowing down to a vague catchall clause . I am an anxious person and don't want live in fear of this...