Powertoys WebLog : Testing Tools

If you use Regular Expressions, you need to check out this Regex Builder tool

Powertoys — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 21:29:00 GMT

One of my coworkers in Visual Studio has created this really cool tool for creating and testing Regular Expressions. I’ve just recently started using .NET Regular Expressions in my Editor testing, so take my word for it that this tool greatly helps with writing regular expressions.

Overview for the tool, as written on GotDotNet:
A tool for building and testing Regular Expressions. It allows you to manipulate the expression and your source text, and shows you a tree with all of the Matches, Groups, and Captures found in the text.

The tool can be found at
http://www.gotdotnet.com/Workspaces/Workspace.aspx?id=9e33c395-8275-4906-8a09-0bff41fdc1d6

Thanks,
-sara

DevMetrics 2.0 Released: Software Metrics for C#

Powertoys — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 03:03:00 GMT

Dan, from Anticipating Minds, let me know that they have recently released version 2.0 of the tool we covered in June. For a bit of shameless self promotion I've included his mail in this post:

"In May 2004, Anticipating Minds released devMetrics a free C# software metrics tool for Visual Studio .NET (and a command line version). Thanks to this (the powertoys) site, we had a great response with people downloading and providing input. We just released an update (2.0) that reflects some of the input. Some notable enhancements are:
-Serialized Dataset XML output to provide some great flexibility in reporting and data use.
-Software metrics SDK allowing users to develop their own metrics using our code analysis API's and framework.
-Community page to share code for reporting and custom metrics "

Check it out.
http://www.anticipatingminds.com/Content/Products/devMetrics/devMetrics.aspx

Josh

Process Explorer from Sysinternals

Powertoys — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 21:06:00 GMT

I guess I never listed the Sysinternals tools here because I sort of assumed that even if you have been living under a rock while writing code you've been making use of these utilities. One of my favorites has always been the Process Explorer. It's also the one that prompted Herman to send me the following mail prompting this post...

"Hi Josh,
I just wanted to tell you that you should definitely check out Process Explorer at http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml and feature it on your PowerToys Weblog. It's like Task Manager but as if God build it himself and replaces it neatly. It's so good, I can't even describe it. A must for everybody who opens Task Manager like a million times a day to check what process is trying to get attention.

Best regards, Hermann"

Needless to say that Hermann is probably not the only fan. If you haven't tried it yet, you probably should.

http://www.sysinternals.com/

Josh

PowerTrack 2004 for Project Management inside Visual Studio.NET

Powertoys — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 02:04:00 GMT

Official Site: http://www.axosoft.com/products/powertrack.aspx

Official Line: "This Must-Have Add-In for Visual Studio.NET 2002/2003 gives software developers the ability to track projects, defects and features without ever leaving the Visual Studio IDE. PowerTrack embeds itself into Visual Studio like a native Visual Studio tools window and provides an intuitive interface for tracking software projects, defects and features. Axosoft provides single-user installations of this product free."

Blog Buzz

Andrew Sutton (VB MVP) Says: "... Powertrack is an excellent piece of software that really makes OnTime much easier to use. From me it gets 5/5 and IMHO is a must download for anybody using OnTime & VS. In fact I can imagine I will seldom use the OnTime application interface and will nearly always use Powertrack from now on to track my defects & features!"

WinExtra Says: "Every once in awhile a really cool tool rises to the surface and you wonder why no-one has done it before; and I gotta say that Axosoft's PowerTrack 2004 is definitely one of those tools.... "

Zanebug: Unit Testing With Cool Perf Analysis

Powertoys — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 00:33:00 GMT

Via Adapdev.com:

Zanebug is an advanced unit testing application for .NET. It supports existing NUnit tests, performance metrics, multiple test iterations, in-depth error information, pass / fail stats, perfmon integration, result graphing, etc.

Web Site: http://www.adapdev.org/zanebug

Screenshots: http://www.adapdev.com/zanebug/index.aspx#screenshots

CoadTools Quick Test C# Project Template

Powertoys — Fri, 18 Jun 2004 19:15:00 GMT

Noah Coad left a comment to our entry about the Snippet Compiler to inform us of a quick c# project template he whipped up for testing small bits of code in the full IDE.

From hist post: http://msmvps.com/coad/archive/2004/06/18/8408.aspx

Very often I need to test a tidbit of code, do some research on a class, etc. In fact, I was creating several times as many quick code test projects as any other project need. I used to start a Console application, change it to a Windows Application, but still needed to add namespaces, etc. So I created a custom "New Project" template for Visual Studio .NET 2003. To use, just install, load VS.NET, choose "New Project"/"Visaul C# Projects"/"Quick Test", and you're good to go.

The main goal was to minimize the time to test code. Just start VS.NET, choose the "Quick Test" project, and type code. I wanted to send output to the Trace (VS.NET Ouput Window) and have the most common namespaces already included. You can easily modify the template after it is installed to suite your own needs.

Download: CoadTools Quick Test C# Project Template (setup .msi) for Visual Studio .NET 2003

MbUnit 2.15.1 Beta released....

Powertoys — Wed, 16 Jun 2004 22:46:00 GMT

[Via Peli's Blog]

MbUnit 2.1.5.1 Beta is ready for download. Try it and send me the problems you encounter...

Download for .Net v1.1
Download for .Net v1.0

We have a menu!

From the Official Web Site:" MbUnit is an evolutive Unit Test Framework for .Net. It provides new highly fixtures as well as the framework to create new ones. MbUnit is based QuickGraph, a directed graph library for C#. "

Reflector Graph v1.2 Add-In released

Powertoys — Sat, 12 Jun 2004 21:55:00 GMT

After I posted about Reflector a user asked "What does this do that the built in object browser doesn't?” Here is another good example. Josh
[Via Peli's Blog]

New features:

Unit Test Generation Add-in,
Type Graph Add-in,

Warning: This release has been compiled agains .NET v1.1 (because System.Drawing is buggy in v1.0), therefore you must create a Reflector.exe.config file in the directory of Reflector and add the following:
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<configuration>
<startup>
<supportedRuntime version="v1.1.4322" />
</startup>
</configuration>
About bug reports:

Please, DO NOT post bugs in the blog. It is much more easy for me to monitor bugs through the http://mbunit.tigris.org issue tracking system. :)

Download Now

devMetrics 1.0: Free C# Software Metrics

Powertoys — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 08:41:00 GMT

From Dan at anticipatingminds....

Anticipating Minds has a new Visual Studio .NET Add-in: devMetrics is a C# code analysis tool that gathers software metrics so that developers, leads and software managers can quickly identify potentially problematic and high-risk areas of their .NET code. devMetrics analyzes C# code measuring:

size (files, classes, members, statements, lines, comments)

complexity (cyclomatic code complexity, statements per member, members per class).

devMetrics runs as either a Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Add-in or a stand-alone command line utility.

http://www.anticipatingminds.com/Content/Products/devMetrics/devMetrics.aspx

This was cool to see. As an intern at a company in RI one of my first projects was to write software that generated size and complexity reports for ADA code. Josh

Point and Test NUnit integration for Visual Studio.NET

Powertoys — Mon, 24 May 2004 19:42:00 GMT

A little more testing to start the week. Via NUnitAddIn:

“Point and Test NUnit integration for Visual Studio.NET. The aim of this project it to simplify testing and debugging using the NUnit framework inside of Visual Studio.NET.”

Check it out here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/nunitaddin

Keep in touch with the project Via thier blog as well: http://weblogs.asp.net/nunitaddin

NTime - Performance unit testing tool

Powertoys — Tue, 18 May 2004 20:44:00 GMT

Adam Slosarski presents NTime -a perfomance testing tool- on code project.

[Via Weblogs @ ASP.NET] From the Code Project page: http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/NTime.asp

This article presents a unique tool to run repeatable performance tests in actually developed application by programmers. The NTime tool is very similar to NUnit tool - another unit testing tool, so currently users that use NUnit should see almost the same GUI and functionality.... Developers use NTime tool to test whether their application works with performance specification designed by managers or sometimes by themselves. They need to run NTime tool when they aren't sure whether their rewritten code still works well. NTime tool may have been open always on the desktop even when programmers develop, compile or debug application -- every application build will be reloaded in NTime automatically and shown with updated tests.

Unit testing, but this time for performance. Pretty cool looking. - Josh

ClrUnit: Unit Testing Framework with VS Integration inspired by JUnit

Powertoys — Mon, 17 May 2004 23:29:00 GMT

From John Lewicki comes a new Unit Testing framework for VS integrated as a VSIP package. In his words:

http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/Workspaces/Workspace.aspx?id=b85944cd-fd7b-4b8b-86d1-9fc0c710cd0f

Load your unit tests automatically after every build
Double click navigation to source files for test fixtures and test cases (for languages that support the VS CodeModel).
Run or debug your test within a single instance of Visual Studio.
Double-click navigation to source files from errors and test failures.
Define groups for your tests, to enable flexible test configurations
Test fixtures and test cases can be declared to require their own application domain, with their own configuration file.

This is the first beta release. Bug fixes and improved documentation will follow.

I'll remind users that if you have problems with this (or any of the tools we list here) you should file bugs against the workspace or tool owner so you can be sure they see your feedback. This is really only a listing. :-)

- Josh

Introducing MsaaVerify - an Accessibility testing tool

Powertoys — Tue, 11 May 2004 22:04:00 GMT

Have you ever used AccExplorer or Inspect and wondered whether the information presented was correct? Have you ever wanted to know which controls really need Names, Keyboard Shortcuts, Descriptions, and so forth? It's time to MsaaVerify! MsaaVerify will verify 9 Microsoft Active Accessibility properties for 10 Microsoft Active Accessibility Role types. It doesn't matter whether these controls are standard Windows controls, managed, owner drawn, or custom drawn, just use MsaaVerify!

MsaaVerify is located at the following GotDotNet workspace:

http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/Workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=678c467f-3724-40f0-9de7-db440e4fa148

-Sara