Dominic Hopton's Blog : Test View

Where Have I been? Helping make Team System Rock!

dhopton — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:53:00 GMT

Well, It's been a long time since I blogged - actually, I've not blogged since we shipped our very first release just after Beta 1.

So, what’s been happening with the Testing tools in Team System? Well, I've still got Test View, Manual Testing and Test Project but I now also own Unit Test Debugging, Generic Testing (very useful) and Check-in policy support for Hatteras Source Code Control. But, I've lost Solution Integration - Michael (who owns Code Gen testing) now owns that.

In that time we've released a couple of CTPs that have included our bits - the most recent being The December CTP.

As you'd expect, all of the issues that I talked about in previous blogsicles have been fixed - we're looking in great shape right now. Some of the new functionality we have now in my feature areas are really compelling. Taking debugging as an example - enabling this has made my job of writing tests a lot easier. Just being able to set a break point in the test code and its hit - It's fantastic.

Generic testing enables you to integrate pre-existing test harness & result reporting into our infrastructure. For the full effect, you need to add some code to your test result reporting to output xml (we supply an XSD) with greater detail. Very powerful if you want to take advantage out our integrated solution but don’t want to port all your tests.

Check-in policy is quite possibly my favourite from a what-it-enables aspect - the ability to have a set of tests that must pass before a developer can check-in his code is fantastic. It's such a great way to help ensure that quality of code in the source repository is of a high standard.

I hope to blog more - it's one of my new years resolutions! I look forward to hearing comments from you, and also make sure you check on MSDN Chats for EDT chats.

Custom Test Properties & Test View - What is & What will be...

dhopton — Wed, 26 May 2004 01:09:00 GMT

Ok, So I’d thought about this blog yesterday but discounted it ‘cause its not really my area. But what the heck :)

There is a very cool feature, which isn’t fully surfaced yet in the UI. This allows you to define new properties for your tests, which can be shown in the property window. Under test properties you’ll see “Test Specific” group, which shows your new property.

Right now, the bit that is missing is the ability to group-by & filter on these properties rather than just the core set. I just talked to the Dev who owns Test View (since our PM is at TechEd), and I was remembering right – our current plan is to allow you to filter, group by and add columns for those properties to the test view. Also, the property window is going to allow you to edit these properties and round trip them to code – so even if you don’t know the language your tests are in you can manipulate the custom properties.

Cool, isn’t it? :)

Test View – your new most used window

dhopton — Tue, 25 May 2004 00:42:00 GMT

Let’s take a look at the Test View tool window – the place where you will be running your tests from as you develop and debug them. Test View provides you with a flat list of all your tests, with each test only listed once. From this window you can easily manipulate the properties of your tests, easily edit the test themselves, and execute one or more tests under a specific run configuration.

Let’s take a quick tour round the window.

At the top of the window we have the toolbar:

Group By Drop-down: This allows you to group your tests by the value of certain properties. With only 10-20 tests this isn’t really an issue, since you can navigate and find most of the items by sight. but when you’ve got 100’s of tests it’s must harder. With Group By, the tests are (duh) grouped by their property and those groups can be collapsed to just their header to save space. The properties listed are a union of all the properties available for all test types.

Run Tests: ‘nuff said. This will run your tests. Depending on your configuration this may show the Run Configuration dialog.

Customise: This allows you to add/remove columns from the test list, and also arrange the order of those columns. You can also arrange the order of the columns through drag & drop of the header columns in the test list.

Edit Run Config: This allows you to edit your run configuration settings and save those changes to the solution run configuration. This is a convenient way to change settings without running your tests.

Column Header: Exactly as you’d expect.

Test List: This is where you will see all of you your tests of all types listed. You can select one or more tests (of multiple types) and interact with them (run, edit, etc). From this window it is possible to drag & drop tests onto Test Explorer for easy categorization.

From this list, its possible to display a context menu. The items on this context menu can vary from test type to test type, but I’ll cover the basic items here:

Edit: Allows you edit a manual test. This will bring up word if you are editing a MHT test.

Goto Source Code: This will allow you to right click a test in test view and jump straight to the source code without hunting it down. Very useful.

Run Selection: As per the run button on the toolbar.

Delete: This only works for Manual Tests at the moment and removes (but doesn’t delete) the manual test from the project.

Open Test Explorer: Shows test explorer or brings to the front if it’s already open.