[Mono-dev] Ann: NUnit 2.4 Beta 1 Release

[Charlie Poole]

Hi All,

The first Beta of NUnit 2.4 is now available on from any of the usual
places:
    http://nunit.org/?p=download
    http://nunit.com/nunit/?p=download
    http://sourceforge.net/project/nunit

The NUnit team has spent a lot of time on this release and we're proud of
its new features. The crashing problems in the Alpha release have been fixed
and we feel it would be reasonable for developers to use the new release for
their individual testing. We recommend sticking with the production release
for your continuous integration or nightly test runs.

This note gives some of the highlights of the release. Full release notes
are available at
http://nunit.org?p=releaseNotes&r=2.4 or
http://nunit.com/nunit/?p=releaseNotes&r=2.4

GENERAL

* In addition to the .Net 1.1 and 2.0 Windows platforms, we now build and
test NUnit using the Mono 1.0 and 2.0 profiles on Windows and Linux. A
number of tests are currently excluded under Linux and we are continuing to
work on them. We believe the problems are solely in the tests, but we need
to get them working to be sure.

FRAMEWORK

* New asserts have been added, including CollectionAssert and FileAssert
classes.

* A new SetUpFixtureAttribute allows one-time initialization and cleanup for
all tests in a given namespace or across the entire assembly.

* ExpectedExceptionAttribute now allows verifying the message of an
exception based on a substring or a regular expression.

* There are several new options relating to how assemblies are loaded and
run.
   - Use of a separate AppDomain for each assembly
   - Merging of multiple assemblies in the test tree so that corresponding
namespaces in each assembly are combined. This option requires use of a
single AppDomain.
   - Elimination of the automatic namespace suites, so that a flat list of
fixtures is presented. This option may be combined with either of the other
two.

  NOTE: In the Beta release, only the first option is available using the
Console runner. All three are available in the Gui, through the Options
dialog.

* User fixture objects are no longer re-used across test runs. They are
created at the time the fixture is being executed and destroyed on
completion. If the fixture object implements IDisposeable, then Dispose is
called on it before it is released.

CONSOLE RUNNER

* When multiple assemblies are listed on the console runner command line,
they are loaded into separate AppDomains. This allows use of separate
configs for each assembly.

* The console runner writes its Trace output at all times, not just when run
under the debugger.

* The /include and /exclude options may now be combined.

GUI RUNNER

* The Gui runner is now called "nunit.exe"

* The test tree now uses bitmaps that are distinguishable without regard to
color. The actual bitmaps used may be tailored by the user by replacing the
files that contain them.

* A new 'Test' menu contains entries to run the selected test, all tests or
tests that failed on the last run. These are accessible by shortcut keys,
permitting single keystroke execution of the tests.

* The 'View' menu has been reorganized and contains added capabilities,
including changing the font of the display, switching to a new 'mini-gui'
display, and activating or deactivating various parts of the display.

* The properties dialog has been reorganized to use a single window and
displays more information about the test.

* A new option permits automatically re-running the tests when an assembly
has changed.

EXTENSIBILITY

* Add-ins may now be installed by copying them to the NUnit bin\addins
subdirectory.