TestDriven.NET by Jamie Cansdale

Microsoft vs TestDriven.NET - 31 May 2007

I have just received another courier delivered letter from Microsoft's lawyers. That makes a total of 3 letters in 4 working days! I can see how these things can get expensive very quickly.

I'd like to highlight a couple of things in the letter.

They say that I have been in correspondence with Microsoft about these issues for many months. What they don't take into account is that in over a year of correspondence - Microsoft consistently refused to tell me which license I was allegedly in violation of.

For example on Feb 26, 2007 Jason Weber said:

Jamie, for the reasons we discussed at great length, we believe your
various extensions to the Visual Studio Express products necessarily
violated the relevant license terms. We don't think it's productive to
rehash those discussions.

We may have discussed this at great length, but I was never told what that the "relevant license terms" actually were! I only re-enabled Express support when Microsoft yet again failed to tell me where I was in violation. A straight answer with something I could tell my users would have resolved this.

I'm not sure where on my website this was suggested. It's possible that they're referring  to one of the comments on the last post. They do however bring up an interesting point. The license attached to their first letter was the one for "Visual Studio 2005 Standard and Academic Editions". It didn't matter that the license wasn't the Express SKU license because the wording is the same. What if it turns out that the reason I can't add buttons to Express SKU also applies to Visual Studio 2005? I would then be forced to take down TestDriven.NET entirely. What if it also means I can't use PopFly Explorer for Visual Studio Express? :-(

Update: In the comments I've been asked to post my reply to Microsoft's lawyers.
Update: I have just authorized all comments after being offline for the weekend (a wedding in Scotland). Comment moderation is on to prevent spam. I do not censor comments as has been suggested.

Microsoft vs TestDriven.Net Express

There are a few things I need to get off my chest.

When I started working on TestDriven.Net I was a hobbyist .NET developer. My day job was as a Java consultant. TestDriven.Net was something I did for fun between consultancy gigs. Working on open source projects can be a great way to learn a new technology. I enjoyed being part of the fledgling .NET community and positive reception TestDriven.Net (then NUnitAddIn) was getting.

When TestDriven.Net 1.0 was released I was still hobbyist .NET developer. It was only natural that I use the Express SKU which was being targeted at other hobbyist developers. In fact I developed the whole of TestDriven.NET 1.0 using C# Express, MSBuild and WiX (as described in this post).

A few months after TestDriven.Net 1.0 was released I was given the MVP award by Microsoft. According to Ben Miller (my then MVP lead) I was "very well known" for having created TestDriven.Net. As far as I'm aware this was the primary reason I received the award.

On Dec 1, 2005 I received an email from Jason Weber the lead for the Visual Studio IDE and Visual Studio SDK. Apparently Jason wanted to better understand my product and strategy. It was clear from the email subject that Jason incorrectly assumed TestDriven.Net was a VSIP Package. The interesting thing about VSIP packages being that they require a special key from Microsoft in order to function.

This is where the story begins. I'm not going to summarize what happened. I'm going to give you all the information so you can make up your own mind.

1. The first set of emails are between Dec 1, 2005 and Mar 30, 2006. They culminate in a teleconference between Craig Symonds (the General Manager for Visual Studio), Grant Drake, Jason Weber (who doesn't say a word) and myself.
2. The second set of emails are between March 31, 2006 and Apr 17, 2007. They culminate with Jason finally letting me know which license I'm supposedly in breach of (the Express EULA). I'm still none the wiser about which clause.
3. Finally I receive two letters (delivered by motorcycle courier) from Microsoft's UK lawyers. For the first time ever I am told which exact clause I'm supposedly in breach of. The second letter lets me know that they are reading my weblog and the TestDrivenUsers group.

Less than a year ago I was still a hobbyist .NET developer. I created TestDriven.Net as a tool for myself and something that I hoped other .NET developers would find useful. I have no intention of selling out and giving in to this kind of petty bullying without a fight.

Update: I received another letter on May 31, 2007.
Update: Fixed the email formatting when viewed in IE.

TestDriven.NET 2.7 on Orcas Express!

I'm happy to report that TestDriven.NET is working on Orcas Express! If you'd like to try out the new C# 3.0/VB 9.0 language features without installing the full Visual Studio Orcas Edition then now's your chance. You should find this version works with Visual C#, VB and C++ Orcas Express CTP/.NET 3.5 Beta 1. Due to some changes Microsoft made to Orcas it works even more seamlessly than it does in Visual Studio 2005 Express!

NOTE: There is a chance this functionality will be disabled at 4 PM London time next Friday, 1 June 2007. Why find a technical solution to a problem when you have an army of lawyers?

MbUnit 2.4 RTM

Congratulations to Andrew Stopford and the MbUnit team for getting MbUnit 2.4 RTM out the door! This has been over 6 months of hard work. Well done everyone who was involved in this release. Not forgetting Peli who originally started this project (he was taken from us ;).

Andy has created a Facebook group for MbUint users. Join up and show your support.

Silverlight Browser on CodePlex

Last week Ernie Booth announced a SilverlightBrowser plugin for Reflector. The plugin allows you to browse web pages that contain Silverlight elements and display their constituent Javascript, XAML and assembly files.

Ernie released the 0.1 Alpha code so people were free to modify it. The way the 0.1 code obtained the .js, .xaml and .dll files was by searching the HTML and Javascript source for specific patterns. For example it would search the HTML file for 'Silverlight.createObject' and extract the .xaml link from its parameters. This is similar to how Lutz's SilverlightLoader plugin works.

The problem with this technique is that it assumes that the 'Silverlight.js' and API (which comes with the Silverlight SDK) is being used. Unfortunately this won't always be the case. Some people may include the <object> or <embed> tags directly in the HTML or embed the XAML in a <script> block. A good example of this is Sam Ruby's Inline SVG in MSIE demo. This demo creates a Silverlight <embed> element and converts the SVG content into XAML on the fly!

I've modified Ernie's code so that is searches the WebBrowser object model for the .js and .xaml files. This means it is no longer making the assumption that 'Silverlight.js' is being used. It doesn't yet support XAML that is emended in a <script> block. I'm hoping to have it working with Sam's demo in the next version.

I have kicked off a community project for the SilverlightBrowser plugin on CodePlex (with Ernie's blessing). You can download latest version of the plugin from here.

The Difference Between Silverlight and Apollo

Dare Obasanjo puts it best when he writes:

Although Pete does a good job of explaining the goals of Adobe Apollo with a great example, I think there is a simpler and more cynical way of spelling out the difference between Silverlight and Apollo. I'd describe the projects as:

Apollo is Adobe's Flash based knock off competitor to the .NET Framework while Silverlight is Microsoft's .NET Framework based knock off competitor to the Flash platform.

A lot shorter and more to the point. :)

If you're not already subscribed to Dare's blog you're missing out.

Using TestDriven.NET with XNA Game Studio Express

Henning Degn recently contacted me with a problem he was having running XNA code from TestDriven.NET. The code would run fine when executed from the application's 'Main' method. However when executing it as an ad-hoc test from TestDriven.NET he was seeing the following exception:

Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.ContentLoadException: Error loading "Content\myTexture". File not found. ---> System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException: Could not find a part of the path  'C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_32\Microsoft.Xna.Framework\1.0.0.0__6d5c3888ef60e27d\Content\myTexture.xnb'

It turns out that XNA tries to load its content files from a directory relative to the 'Assembly.GetEntryAssembly()' code base. The problem occurs when no 'Main' method is called (which happens when an ad-hoc or unit test executed) and no entry assembly is set. When this happens XNA defaults to using 'Assembly.GetCallingAssembly()' instead. Unfortunately the calling assembly is 'Microsoft.Xna.Framework' which is located in the GAC.

What we needed to do was find a way to set the entry assembly. Henning has documented our solution here. It basically involves calling a utility method 'AssemblyUtilities.SetEntryAssembly()' the beginning of each test.

Happy game development. :-)

Note: You will need TestDriven.NET 2.5 Beta or greater for XNA Game Studio Express support.

iPhone on Silverlight Promo Video?

On the Silverlight promo video did anyone notice one of the actors using a device that looks for all the world like an Apple iPhone? ;-)

Test With... Silverlight/CoreCLR

I have just released a new version of TestDriven.NET (2.7 Beta) with support for Silverlight/CoreCLR. Simply right click on the method you would like to execute with the CoreCLR and select 'Test With... Silverlight'. You can use this to execute any public methods (ad-hoc tests). I recommend you use 'Console.WriteLine' for any output messages. 'Trace.WriteLine' is supported by Silverlight's version of 'System.dll' but you would need to use something like DebugView to see the output.

Here is an example method being executed with Silverlight:

As shown above you do have access to the 'System.Windows.Browser.HtmlPage' static methods and properties (from the 'System.Silverlight' assembly). Hopefully people will find this feature useful for spelunking the Silverlight functionality.

I am working on proper unit testing support for Silverlight projects. At the moment none of the unit testing frameworks supported by TestDriven.NET (NUnit, MbUnit, MSTest or Zanebug) are compatible with the CoreCLR. I have had some success getting unit tests running using NUnitLite. You are welcome to contact me if you would like to try an early version of this.

Silverlight Console Applications

Last week Harry Pierson wrote:

I wonder what the hosting model for the Silverlight CLR looks like? According to the "essential architecture", Silverlight includes the .NET Framework, the Core Presentation Framework and the Browser Host. But can you host somewhere other than the browser?

When I examined the Silverlight mscorlib assembly I noticed that Console.WriteLine and Console.ReadLine were still available. The functionality left in the Silverlight system assemblies has been pretty ruthlessly trimmed down. This lead me to believe that the Console class had been left there for a reason and there must be a way to run Silverlight console applications.

After some experimentation I have come up with agx.exe - a Silverlight console runner. The agx.exe name is a mixture of agclr.dll (one of the Silverlight assemblies) and clix.exe (the SSCLI/Rotor managed code runner).

Below is an example that shows some environment information and demonstrates Console.ReadLine working:

Hear is the IronPython interactive shell running as a console application inside Silverlight. I did have to tweak the source a bit to get this working. A few things like Assembly.Load(...) behave a little differently to their .NET 2.0 equivalents. A few IronPithon features appear not to be implemented when compiled for Silverlight.

The reason I'm experimenting with Silverlight console applications is so that unit tests can be executed inside the CoreCLR. I will then be able to add a 'Test With... Silverlight' option to TestDriven.NET. If you would like to try an early version of this functionality, feel free to drop me an email.