More than One Way to Test it

Posted April 14th, 2007
Filed Under: NUnit

Sometimes when I’m testing, I just want to smoke test the entire solution, particularly when I just synched up multiple changes from the rest of the team. This is when I use the TestMatrix | Test Explorer, then pick the solution in the drop down.

From here I can just hit the play arrows and run the entire solution. See the icon for solution, and the
nested assembly icon? I can click and explore the tests visually like I would with NUnit GUI but one notch more convenient by avoiding the window shuffle toggling back and forth.

I also tend to work in one assembly/project at a time with modular changes. This is where selecting a single project makes sense. The drop down is filtered to be only those projects that reference NUnit to keep it nice and short. So in exploring and running the tests I can work on the solution or a single project.

If I’m just working in a single class, doing pure TDD unit testing as I code, I tend to run the tests right from the editor with the context menu or Ctrl-R,T as a hotkey (remember it as Control Run Test).

And having run the test, the test results show up right there in the editor.

I think about it in terms of big test runs and small test runs. Big runs I tend to do with the explorer, mainly having been hooked on NUnit GUI early on. Small runs I tend to do right in the editor, similar to TestDriven.NET – but with graphical feedback right on the test case. Pass/Fail is a bit more ‘in your face’. Particularly on failed tests, which is what it’s all about. Just hover over the ‘fingers’ – the 5 horizontal markers. This shows you exactly where a test failed, and prints out the message and stack trace. You can see why your test failed without a lot of hopping around.

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