NCover on Visual Studio .NET 2002/2003?

Matt Ellis wrote:

Hi Jamie - this looks really neat, but how can it work with all versions of Visual Studio if it requires .net 2?

Visual Studio will load the .net runtime for it's own packages, and I'd expect that runtime to be the version the IDE targets, and since you can't have multiple instances of the runtime loaded in one exe, how can this require .net 2?

Just wondering, 'cos I'd love to use this in 2003, but in a work environment, where we we're not yet ready to migrate to 2005 and .net 2.0.

This functionality does work with Visual Studio .NET 2002/2003. I know this is rather counterintuitive and sure to become a FAQ.

There are two components that make up NCover. One part is written in C++ (native code) and executes inside the target .NET process. This component is compatible with .NET 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0. The other component executes outside the target process and is responsible for monitoring it and writing the XML coverage file. For a number of reasons Peter Waldschmidt chose to write this component (NCover.Console.exe) using .NET 2.0. This is why NCover support has a dependency .NET 2.0, but is still able to create coverage reports for .NET 1.0/1.1 processes.

In order to put to rest the idea that TestDriven.NET 2.0 is only compatible with Visual Studio 2005, I've created a video showing it working with Visual Studio .NET 2002/.NET 1.0. In the video you can see TestDriven.NET being used to test a .NET 1.0 application using NCover, NCoverExplorer and NUnit GUI.

You may be wondering why I think it's important to stay compatible with VS2002. In the survey I put up last year, more than 6% of users said they still use VS2002! More importantly however is confidence. If I were to drop support for VS2002 now, who's to say I wouldn't drop support for VS2003 in a years time? I know for some users this confidence is important.