TestDriven.NET by Jamie Cansdale

NCoverExplorer... v1.3.1

Syndicated from Kiwidude's Geek Spot

A ton of new features in the latest release, and a few bugs fixed ranging from minor annoyance (code highlighting) to downright critical for some (supporting .Net 2.0 features like partial classes and generics - thanks to Jamie Cansdale & Andreas Hofer in particular for pointing out the issues!).

As per usual you can download this version with the just released build (2.0.1435) of TestDriven.Net or as a standalone product via the links at the bottom of this post.

What's New? Loads... more than I'm going to mention here (see the release notes for the full list). Let's look at the options dialog:

Apart from the new tabbed appearance there are some other new options to note here:

• Namespaces will now be "flattened" by default which is the same appearance as Reflector or the VS.Net 2005 class viewer (see screenshot below).
  
• For the VB.Net crowd out there you can now exclude the "My" namespace by default which NCover includes in the results, distorting your coverage percentages.
• An optional threshold for the number of unvisited lines in a method. Acts in a similar way to the existing % threshold feature but just another way of convincing yourself things aren't as bad as they may first seem...

Probably the most requested feature I have had is the ability to customise the colours - so here you go! There is more to come in the future on this but for now you can change:

Moving onto the display itself, you can see some new menu options in the tree view and the default view of a "Flat" namespace hierarchy below:

The two new right-click menu options are:

• Remove from results - does what it says on the tin. This option is context aware so you can use it to "prune" your coverage tree - be it to remove a unit test assembly as shown above or exclude a class. After the remove action is selected NCoverExplorer recalculates the percentages in the tree.
• Collapse All - collapses every single coverage node in the tree.

Next is the statistics pane. This has had quite a revamp (my thanks to Andrzej Kaczmarczyk for his suggestions). Clicking on a class node now produces a summary of all the methods and the number of times they were executed (shown below). The columns are now sortable as well. This offers a rudimentary form of code profiling analysis.

Clicking on a method node is also slightly tweaked to show the method name.

The final new feature I think worth highlighting is that by default NCoverExplorer now tries to restore your cursor position / current selected node when reloading a coverage file. So when used in conjunction with the superb TestDriven.Net "Test With... Coverage" feature you no longer need to keep re-expanding the nodes to get to where you last were...

I look forward to your feedback with any additional suggestions, comments... or even dare I suggest new bugs! This release has made quite a dent in the features todo list but there's still a number of things on it yet...

Also very much worth noting - the latest NCover beta release 1.5.3 is now available - highly recommended for the bug fixes alone. Thanks Peter!

Download NCoverExplorer 1.3.1 binaries (203KB)
Mirror Site

Release Notes
FAQ

NCoverExplorer V1.3

If you thought The Debut version of NCoverExplorer was good, Grant Drake has made a bunch of updates in the v1.3 version that make it even better! There are two new functions in particular that I use all the time. They are "Expand Covered" and "Edit in VS.NET".

"Expand Covered" automatically expands all nodes in the tree that are likely to be of interest. This is particularly useful if you are using code coverage on a subset of your tests. It is usually the first thing I do when NCoverExplorer opens.

"Edit in VS.NET" allows quick navigation between NCoverExplorer and your Visual Studio code. This function is available on all of NCoverExplorers context menus (code view, tree view and visit pane).

There are lots of other improvements. Assemblies now show up as nodes in the tree view (allowing you to focus on the assembly you're testing). The open NCoverExplorer application is reused by Visual Studio (no need to keep closing it). For a full list of changes see the release notes.

We have been very successfully trialing FogBugz for our bug and feature tracking. If you find any bugs or have suggestions for improvements, please submit them here (for the next 40 days). If you're interested in code coverage, please subscribe to Grant's blog. You can download the latest version of NCoverExplorer (packaged with TestDriven.NET) here

Installing Code Coverage for a Limited User

To make TestDriven.NET and NCover work from a LUA, you can use Aaron Margosis's MakeMeAdmin batch file. You will need the Administrator and LUA account passwords handy. From the 'Admin' command prompt, execute the following commands:

After installing you will be able to use the 'Test With... Coverage' button from you LUA. Assuming you have .NET 2.0 installed, this will work with all versions of Visual Studio. You will need to use NCover 1.5.1 Beta (or later).

NCoverExplorer Feedback?

Grant Drake is soliciting for feedback in the TestDriven.NET Users group. If you have any ideas for what you would like to see in the next build of NCoverExplorer, please dive in there and let him know. We already have some ideas (e.g. "Edit in VS.Net"), but would like to thrash out the details. There is no point spending time on features unless we know they are going to be used!

NCover 1.3.3 + .NET 1.1

I know some organisations aren't ready to deploy .NET 2.0 on their developers' machines. In fact Grant Drake, the author of NCoverExplorer is in exactly this situation. This meant that he wasn't able to use the new 'Test With... Coverage' functionality at work (as it required NCover 1.5.x + .NET 2.0). I have since added support for the earlier NCover 1.3.3. You can now use code coverage on a bare bones installation of Visual Studio .NET 2003 (as of build 1342). Note this will only work with VS2003. If you want to use coverage with VS2002, VS2005 or Express, you must use .NET 2.0 + NCover 1.5.1 (or later)

This is my way of apologising to Grant for leaving him the wrong side of a firewall, with an unfamiliar version control system at 3AM!

BTW, If you're using NCoverExplorer you should read the FAQ that Grant recently put up.

Continuous Integration on Hanselminutes

Scott Hanselman has posted a new episode of his Hanselminutes podcast dedicated to continuous integration. He talks about everything from CI servers, installer generators, testing tools to code coverage. He also has some kind words to say about TestDriven.NET. Thank you Scott!

In the podcast Scott had a brainstorm and forgot the name of Sean McCormack's unit testing tool Zanebug. On a related note, I'm happy to report that the latest build of Zanebug now includes TestDriven.NET integration. Zanebug uses the Adapdev framework (Adapdev.UnitTest.dll), which includes features such as transactional and multi-threaded tests. You can find more information here.

A quick reminder about the 'Test With... Application' functionality. Entries for any supported test tools (NUnit, MbUnit and Zanebug) will only show up on the 'Solution Explorer' project context menu once TestDriven.NET has been activated. This happens the first time one of TestDriven.NET's menu buttons is used. It can also happen when Visual Studio starts if 'Startup' is checked in the 'Add-in Manager' (TD.NET uses JIT activation by default).

If you execute the following registry script, you can create a very basic form of Reflector integration:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MutantDesign\TestDriven.NET\TestRunners\Reflector]
@="100"
"Application"="c:\\Programs\\Reflector\\Reflector.exe"

Using the Reflector menu button will cause Reflector to open the assembly of the selected project.