Unit Testing with Visual Studio 2008

Unit testing features will now be available in the Professional version of Visual Studio 2008.

Unit testing has been to Visual Studio what Barry Bonds has been baseball – a center of controversy. First there was the Peter Provost petition to include unit testing features in all version of VS. Then there was the highly criticized TDD guidance accompanying the feature. Next came some performance issues and pain while using the shipping version, and most recently, the TestDriven.NET hullaballoo added an emotional charge to the air.

Putting all this behind us - what's new in 2008? I've been working with the latest bits, and I can say:

1. Performance has improved dramatically.
2. The context-menu command "Run Tests" is new (and context sensitive).
3. Keyboard shortcuts take away the pain of the VS2005 test runner (Ctrl+R, A to run all tests in a solution, Ctrl+R, T to run tests in the current context).

Moving the unit-testing features into the Pro edition is a great move by Microsoft. I hope the feature gains traction and brings awareness of unit testing into the mainstream (although I think we are already close, aren't we?).

Related Links

Guidelines for Test-Driven Development by Jeff Palermo
Rules to Better Unit Tests by Adam Cogan.