TestDriven.NET by Jamie Cansdale : Mono

Microsoft vs TestDriven.Net Express

Jamie Cansdale — Wed, 30 May 2007 23:12:00 GMT

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.

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.
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.
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.

Test With... Silverlight/CoreCLR

Jamie Cansdale — Wed, 16 May 2007 13:23:05 GMT

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.

Express SKU Support

Jamie Cansdale — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 19:24:35 GMT

I have recently uploaded TestDriven.NET 2.5 Beta. This version now supports all versions of Visual Studio .NET including the Express SKU. To activate TestDriven.NET when using an Express edition simply ensure that the 'Properties' tool window is visible and click on any node in the 'Solution Explorer'. You should see a 'TestDriven' property which shows the version of TestDriven.NET you are using when the extension is active.

You can download this version from here.

TestDriven.NET has been designed to work with C#, VB, C++ and J# Express. Visual Web Developer Express is not yet supported. I'm hoping to add support for this and Visual Studio 2005 'Web Site' projects in a future version.

TestDriven.NET 2.4 Beta + NUnit 2.4 RC2

Jamie Cansdale — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:29:00 GMT

I have just uploaded a new build of TestDriven.NET with support for NUnit 2.4 RC2. Rather than simply swap out NUnit 2.2.9 for NUnit 2.4 RC2 I'm including both versions side by side. This means more conservative users can stick with NUnit 2.2.9 and expect it to behave exactly the same as it did before. The more adventurous can start playing with the NUnit 2.4 release candidate and hopefully give feedback before the RTM version ships.

Here are some links for NUnit 2.4:

The screenshot below shows 'NUnit 2.2' and 'NUnit 2.4' GUI options appearing on the 'Solution Explorer' project context menu. In theory you should be able to open any NUnit tests with either GUI. I'm including both because I don't want to force an RC version of NUnit on my users.

When tests are executed with 'Run Test(s)' command the version of the NUnit engine used will depend on which version of the 'nunit.framework' assembly is referenced. If 'nunit.framework' version 2.3.*-2.4.* is referenced the NUnit 2.4 engine will be used. Otherwise if 'nunit.framework' version 2.0.*-2.2.* is referenced the NUnit 2.2 engine will be used.

You may have noticed on the screenshot above a new 'Test With... Mono' option. You will find this on all of the 'Test With' menus (after installing Mono). Both NUnit 2.4 and MbUnit 2.4 have been tested and confirmed to work on Mono 1.2.3.

Reflector on Mono 1.2.3

Jamie Cansdale — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 18:36:00 GMT

Miguel de Icaza writes:

This time Reflector will work out of the box with Mono on Unix (no special handling or special flags) and will event detect the presence of your Mono libraries:

One thing to watch out for when running Reflector on Mono is the 'Show PDB symbols' setting. This uses COM Interop under the covers and will cause an exception to be thrown. This won't happen immediately and only happens when PDB symbols are available. The simple fix is to uncheck the 'Show PDB symbols' setting in Reflector's options.

I'm happy to see that Mono and its supporting tools and libraries have been coming on in leaps and bounds recently. Look out for interesting applications and libraries starting off in the Mono world and making their way over to .NET. It's facinating to see the differences in culture and kind of applications that have evolved in the two camps.

Update: Hammette corrects me by saying "MonoRail has no affiliation with Mono whatsoever. The Mono portion on its name is just, well, a coincidence". MonoRail does however work on Mono and is well worth checking out. It's a kind of Ruby on Rails for .NET. I hope the "Rail" bit wasn't coincidence as well. ;-)

Reflector on Mono 1.1.17

Jamie Cansdale — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 16:49:45 GMT

Here's a screenshot of Reflector running on Mono 1.1.17. The tree view seems to work fine. Unfortunately the Dissasembler view is throwing an exception. Still very impressive. I expect it will be working a lot better in the next release. Well done Mono team! :)

Here's the exception the Dissasembler view throws.

Value '-16' must be greater than or equal to 0.

System.Exception

  at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollBar.set_LargeChange (Int32 value) [0x00000] 
  at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.Windows.Forms.ScrollBar:set_LargeChange (int)
  at System.Windows.Forms.TextBoxBase.CalculateScrollBars () [0x00000]

Mono 1.1.7 and NUnit

Jamie Cansdale — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 13:09:00 GMT

On the NUnit developers mailing list Cory Fox writes:

See attached - this is the 1.1.17 latest Mono release running the 2.4
Release Candidate code with the GUI build turned on, under Gentoo Linux.

This is great news, because no special anything was necessary. This
should mean that, with some minor fixes, we should have NUnit GUI
building on Mono/Linux for the 2.4 release!

A little further down Mat writes:

For those experimenting with mono, Reflector runs when using the /compat
switch and so does Paint.NET, among other things.

Did I read that right? Reflector works on Mono! :)