I've been using Visual Studio 2008 Test projects to store my tests. Lately I've realized that a lot of my unit tests are in fact integration tests because they rely on external sources (e.g. file system, SQL server, registry).
My question is, what is a good approach to separating out integration tests from unit tests?
Ideally I want only the unit tests to show up in the Test View, because I run them frequently during development. The integration tests on the other hand I don't want in the Test View because I will only run them infrequently, e.g. when I'm about to make a build drop.
Keep them in separate projects, and keep the integration testing projects out of your day-to-day Visual Studio solutions.
When you wish to run the integration tests, you can use a different solution that includes them. If you don't want to wait for a second instance of VS to load, you can run them from the command-line.
I put them in a separate project named IntegrationTests or something similar.
EDIT:
With Test View you can create lists & filter them:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182452.aspx
And then run them:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182470.aspx
Related
We have a TFS build definition that kicks off NUnit tests tagged with the 'Regression' test category. This uses the NUnit console runners annotation of
where cat = 'Regression'
However, we have multiple different environments where some tests will fail in one environment, they will pass in the other. We have not made much use of the Playlist feature, because I can not find a way to target a playlist when running remotely on TFS. Does anyone know how this can be done? Thanks!
Unfortunately, there is no way of specifying this/playlist in the TFS Build Definition for now. A related uservoice:
Allow test playlists to be used by TFS build servers
https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/330519-visual-studio-team-services/suggestions/3853614-allow-test-playlists-to-be-used-by-tfs-build-serve
As a workaround, you could use .orderedtest instead of .playlist.
Ordered tests can be created and edited in VS2013 and later. The format is otherwise similar to .playlist but it contains links to test GUIDs so its more complicated to modify programmatically.
TFS is able to run orderedtest in build pipeline, how to achieve this you could refer below links:
TFS - order of automata tests to execute
How to use Vnext build: ordered tests, distribute test, collect results
I created a build definition that runs automated tests using MTM build environments and test suites. I recently created a Visual Studio Load Test, which can be added to a test suite just like any test method marked with the [TestMethod] attribute. However, when I run the build, I get no errors and it appears the aggregate tests don't run. Is there a way to make this work?
I found this article: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/testingspot/2013/01/22/how-to-automatically-run-a-load-test-as-part-of-a-build/ which describes a way to do it, but I can't find a build template that matches what he describes, and it appears this only allows you to run a single load test.
Also, when you configure a test controller, there is an option to configure it for load testing, but to do this, you must unregister it from the Team Project Collection. If this is done, it appears the controller can no longer be used in an environments to run project automated tests. This defeats the purpose of what I want to do and makes it seem that Load Tests and Team Projects are mutually exclusive. Is this the case? If so, this is a big oversight. Load tests are the kind of thing you would like to run automatically. Thanks for the help.
You are unfortunately right. A test controller used for load testing cannot be used for other automated test execution 'at the same time'. In your scenario I would recommend that you setup a different test controller and agent for load testing and you would be able to queue it as a part of your build to achieve what you are looking for.
There is no special build process template for this case.
I am aware of multiple methods one can use to keep certain types of test out of a test playlist: filtering by TestCategory or class name etc.
I am also aware that one can instruct TFS builds to only run certain categories or classes of test.
However, I find it quick and convenient to be able to check my unit test runs just by going into Test Explorer and clicking "run all". It's good practice to do this regularly and prior to check-in to ensure the build is likely to pass.
Is there a straightforward way I can configure my tests to ensure that "run all" just picks up the quick unit tests, and leaves the slower system and regression tests alone? Ideally, I'd like a method that can easily be applied to everyone else working on the code at the same time.
It's a little incomprehensible. Since the MSDN explains very clear.Run all just mean run all tests. And there are also filters or other settings can achieve just run unit tests.
And also as your have mentioned, you can run unit tests with your builds directly. Why you need this function. If you just want to make sure the check-in will not cause build fail. You can use Gated Check-in directly. This also applied to everyone else.
I'm new to load testing in Visual Studio/MSTest, and I created a new Load Test recently to validate some high-traffic scenarios for a WCF service. I want to add this to the tests project for the service, but I don't want the test to be executed whenever I "Run All Tests in Solution" nor as part of our Continuous Integration build-verification process because a) it takes 5 minutes to run, and b) the service call that it is testing generates many thousands of email messages. Basically, I'd like to do the equivalent of adding the [Ignore] attribute to a unit test so that the load test is only executed when I explicitly choose to run it.
This MSDN Article ("How to: Disable and Enable Tests") suggests that the only to disable the test is to use Test Lists (.vsmdi files), but I don't have much experience with them, they seem like a hassle to manage, I don't want to have to modify our CI Build Definition, and this blog post says that Test Lists are deprecated in VS2012. Any other ideas?
Edit: I accepted Mauricio's answer, which was to put the load tests into a separate project and maintain separate solutions, one with the load tests and one without. This enables you to run the (faster-running) unit tests during development and also include the (slower-running) load tests during build verification without using test lists.
This should not be an issue for your CI Build Definition. Why?
To run unit tests as part of your build process you need to configure the build definition to point to a test container (usually a .dll file containint your test classes and methods). Load tests do not work this way, they are defined within .loadtest files (which are just xml files) that are consumed by the MSTest engine.
If you do not make any further changes to your CI Build definition the load test will be ignored.
If you want to run the test as part of a build, then you need to configure the build definition to use the .loadtest file.
Stay away from testlists. Like you said, they are being deprecated in VS11.
Edit: The simplest way to avoid running the load test as part of Visual Studio "Run All" tests is to create a different solution for your load tests.
Why don't you want to use Test Lists. I think is the best way to do that. Create different Test Lists for each test type (unit test, load test...) and then in your MSTest command run the Test List(s) you want:
MSTest \testmetadata:testlists.vsmdi \testlist:UnitTests (only UnitTests)
MSTest \testmetadata:testlists.vsmdi \testlist:LoadTests (only LoadTests)
MSTest \testmetadata:testlists.vsmdi \testlist:UnitTests \testlist:LoadTests (UnitTests & LoadTests)
We use Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with tests written in MSTest. Both our unit tests and integration tests* are written in MSTest.
**By our definition, an integration test is an MSTest TestMethod that takes a while to run and/or calls out to external components such as a database or web services.*
I'm looking for a way of easily filtering out the integration tests so that only unit tests run without all the integration tests running too.
My ideas so far:
Mark integration tests with the [Ignore] attribute. This works but is a real pain when you do want to run the integration tests.
Assign a [TestCategory] attribute to the different test types. This allows them to be run separately but only through the Test View panel. You can't use CTRL+R, A (Run All Tests in Solution) or other similar shortcuts/hotkeys.
The integration tests are in a separate project, is there something that could be done to stop them running at the project level? As long as it's easy to toggle.
Write the integration tests in a different test framework, e.g. NUnit. This would keep them totally separate from a tooling point of view.
Does anyone have any other suggestions? Are there any plug-ins that can help with this?
I recommend having a different project (or projects) for integration tests because depending on your runner the only real way to run or not run tests across all runners is to include or not include a test class library.
But, I also recommend, if you're using MSTest, to use the TestCategoryAttribute to tag non-unit tests. You can then "filter" tests to be run in Test View with MSTest.
Runners like Resharper and apparently TestDriven.net (http://bit.ly/tmtYC2) allow you to then filter-out those tests from general unit-test executions.
If your unit test project is in a separate namespace, you could use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+R, T to run all tests in the current context (i.e. namespace MyApp.Tests.Unit). To do this place the cursor just after the opening curly brace in the namespace clause of any unit test class.
I have a suggestion but you won't like it.
Abandon MSTest entirely, while other unit test frameworks have been evolving MSTest as almost stopped in time. Yes, it has a major benefit of integrating directly with VS, but if I'm not mistaken that will change in VS 2011 which will provide native support for custom unit test runners integration.
(Note: The stopped in time part may be not true because I confess not paying to much attention to MSTest since I used it sparingly with VS 2008)
I use NUnit and separate my unit tests from the integration tests by using a different class library project. Then I automate the running of the tests using Gallio command line runner allowing me to configure separate scripts for running unit and integration tests.
Finally, personal opinions aside, I'm not sure but the TestDriven.net plugin may have support for running tests with a specific category only, so you could check that.