Grumping about unit testing using VS 2005
time to read 3 min | 409 words

I’m writing this hoping that someone could explain me some of the weird things that are going on in there:

  • No way to run just one test without knowing its full name? I’m sitting in front of a test called LoadTest. Every class in the DAL has such a test. I need to type the full name of the class just to get something that in TestDriven I can do by right click and selecting “Run Tests”.
  • What is going on with Expected Exception and AssemblyInitalize? The two posts should explain what is going on there, but basically both of these features are horribly broken.
  • What is going on with sometimes building the application when I run a test and sometimes not building it. Invariably it doesn’t build after I saw a test failing, change my code, and then I’m left scratching my head wondering what the hell happened there.

 

Things that I really like about it:

  • Run all the tests, you get some broken ones. Run the test again, only the previously failed tests are running. This is a pretty good way to get trimming away test case failures without running the full suite over and over again. In many case we are talking about significant speed advantage.
  • Generate good test code that I can later modify. Sure, it generates a method per overload, and that about it. But it makes sure that I don’t forget about anything while I work my way down the list of generated tests. I often turn a dozen tests into a single one. (There really isn’t any need to test simple properties more than once, now is there?)
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