[Mono-devel-list] NUnit 2.2 Beta 2

[Charlie Poole]

Hi all,

The NUnit 2.2 Beta 2 - version 2.1.92 - came out a few days ago but
without a mono distribution. It's available on sf now.

There were a few minor changes, so the assemblies in the mono package
are versioned as 2.1.92.1.

The release notes are appended below.

Charlie
Charlie Poole
cpoole at pooleconsulting.com
www.pooleconsulting.com
www.charliepoole.org


Release Notes for NUnit 2.2 Beta 2 - Version 2.1.92*
July 6, 2004

This is the fourth major release of NUnit and the third since it was 
rewritten to take advantage of .NET custom attributes. Highlights of 
this release include support for Mono, multiple-test selection in the 
GUI interface, a built-in lightweight mock object facility, new
command line switches for both GUI and Console runners, and new
Category and Explicit attributes.

*NOTE

The Mono download, NUnit.2.1.92-mono.zip, contains assemblies with
version number 2.1.92.1 due to some late corrections.

GENERAL

The msi install of NUnit 2.1.92 continues to be built using Visual 
Studio 2003. The solution and project files in this distribution can 
only be loaded by Visual Studio 2003.

The distributed binaries can run against the Microsoft .NET framework
versions 1.0 or 1.1 or the Mono Beta 1 release. Separate config files 
for each version are no longer needed. Instead, binding redirects are 
provided in each config which apply when running under version 1.0
of the .NET framework. The supplied configs for nunit-gui.exe and
nunit-console.exe require editing in one case only: if both versions
of the framework are installed and the user wants to give preference
to version 1.0, it will then be necessary to change the order of the
supportedRuntime elements.

The NUnit framework and core are now in separate assemblies, both of
which are installed in the GAC. The framework assembly contains all 
types that are normally referenced by tests, while the core contains
those types used by the gui and console runners to execute those
tests. Tests requiring use of core types - TestSuite, for example -
will need to add a reference to the nunit.core.dll assembly.

The NAnt build file now supports building NUnit using version 1.0 or 
1.1 of the .NET framework or with the Beta1 Release of Mono.

Assert.AreEqual has been extended to allow comparison of two arrays. 
To compare as equal, the arrays must be of the same or compatible types,
contain the same number of elements and each pair of elements 
must compare as equal.

All Assert methods that take an optional message argument now also may
take an optional array of objects to be used in formatting the message.

An Assert.Ignore method has been added, which allows individual test
cases to be ignored dynamically - for example, on the basis of products
installed on the test system. Assert.Ignore may also be called from a
SetUp or TestFixtureSetUp method. In the latter case, all the tests are
ignored.

Failure in TestFixtureSetUp or TestFixtureCleanUp now results in an
error, rather than in ignoring all the tests.

The core interfaces used to run tests have been changed substantially. 
These will continue to change to some extent as we attempt to reach a 
stable set of interfaces for use by third-party clients that run tests 
through NUnit. In particular, the interfaces now support passing in an 
array of tests to be run and return an array of test results. Other 
new features described in this document have required interface 
changes as well.

There is a new CategoryAttribute which allows test fixtures and methods 
to be grouped into one or more categories using strings as identifiers. 
Support is provided for running only those tests in selected categories
or all tests except those in selected categories.

A new ExplicitAttribute designates a test case or fixture that should
only be run when explicitly chosen by the user - selected directly or
included by means of a Category selection. It will not be run merely
because its parent suite is selected.

Tests may now be run using a filter. Currently, this support is used 
only by the new Category feature, but it is intended to be of general 
application for clients and - eventually - users.

NUnit now recognizes when the loaded tests were built using an earlier 
version of the nunit framework and issues an appropriate message. 
Earlier versions simply failed to show any tests present in the
assembly.

NUnit now captures and issues a message when a worker thread, created 
during the running of a test, throws an exception. Previously, such 
exceptions were silently ignored.

The XML output from a test run now shows the number of Asserts executed 
by each test. 

When a test with ExpectedException fails because of an Assert, the 
message from the assert is now given priority over the message 
indicating that the wrong type of exception was thrown.

Private SetUp and TearDown methods are now ignored as intended.

SetUp and TearDown are no longer executed for ignored tests.

The documentation is now provided as a set of HTML files.

FORMS INTERFACE

The tree of tests now optionally displays checkboxes. These may be used 
to select multiple tests to be run. Buttons allow clearing all
checkboxes 
and checking only failing tests.

There is now an option to display the name of each test in the standard
output.

The thread used to run tests is now created in the test AppDomain. The 
priority and apartment state for this thread may now be specified in 
the config file for the test. A separate configuration section is now
used for NUnit settings, to avoid name collision with settings required 
by the application under test.

Command-line options are provided to allow the gui to load and begin 
running a test suite and to load a specific fixture from an assembly.
The properties dialog now shows the number of asserts executed for 
each test and any description associated with a test.

A cancel button has been added to the project save dialog that appears 
on shutdown.

The display of the last exception is now scrollable, allowing the entire
stack to be seen.

CONSOLE INTERFACE

The console program has been reorganized to remove differences in how 
tests are run between the console and gui runners.

The console interface command line parameters now include provision for
selecting or excluding tests based on category, for displaying the name
of each test in the standard output and for redirecting standard or
error output from tests to a file. 

The /noshadow option eliminates creation of a shadow copy and the
/thread option causes the console tests to be run on a separate thread.
When a separate thread is used, the config file settings for apartment
state will be honored.

A namespace may now be specified after /fixture and all tests in that 
namespace will be executed.

MOCK OBJECTS

This version of NUnit comes with a built-in, lightweight mock object 
facility. The functions provided include dynamic creation of an 
implementation of any interface or MBR class, setting of expectations, 
specification of return values and verification that the expected 
actions occurred.

This facility is in no way a replacement for full-fledged mock 
frameworks such as NMock and is not expected to add significant 
features in upcoming releases. Its primary purpose is to support 
NUnit's own tests. We wanted to do that without the need to choose a
particular mock framework and without having to deal with versioning 
issues outside of NUnit itself.

At the same time, we hope that easy availability of a minimal mock 
object facility will inspire users who are not familiar with mock 
objects to experiment with them using our built-in facility and to 
migrate to a more complete framework as your needs call for it.

LIMITATIONS

The CategoryAttribute was originally designed to have an Explicit 
property. This was included in some early releases and is described in
the Pragmatic Programmers' recent book. This property has been removed
and is replaced by the ExplicitAttribute, which can be used in
conjunction with Category to achieve the same effect as shown in
their examples.