TestDriven.NET by Jamie Cansdale

New Version

As some of you have already noticed, the last version of NUnitAddIn expired today.  With impeccable timing my Subversion server ran out of space and 'wedged'.  Luckily I do have backups and local versions on various machines.  To cut a long story short, I have been recovering that rather than getting out a new version for the last 24 hours.

I have uploaded an interim version here whilst I sort out the repository.  You can find the latest version here. Remember to shut down all instances of Visual Studio and uninstall the old version of NUnitAddIn before you install.  You can find a quick way to re-install using the command line here.

Expect documentation and an explanation of the name change in the next few days.

MSBuild FlexWiki

I've just converted my MSBuild Bloggers and Resources post to a FlexWiki page.  Do you have an MSBuild category on your blog?  Have you written any MSBuild tasks?  Do you know of any good articles or resources?  Please add them to the site - don't be shy!

Test With... Runtime

I thought I'd take a souvaneir snapshot before I repave.  The final straw was installing .NET v2.0.31112.  This is the runtime you get with the beta of Monad over at BetaPlace.  Installing it in a virtual machine would have been sensible, but I was impatient.

Below you can see the 'Test With... Runtime' menu.  This menu is auto-populated when you install the add-in.  At the moment it looks for installed versions of .NET and Mono.  With some manual configuration it will work with Rotor/SSCLI as well (if anyone is interested I'll write this up as well).

The test runner used by 'Test With... Runtime' is much simpler than the one used by 'Run Test(s)'.  Whereas 'Run Test(s)' will detect the test framework being used and execute a suite of tests, 'Test With... Runtime' will simply execute a single method using the specified runtime. This makes sense when you can't count on your test execution engine working on the target runtime (a serious issue when working with Rotor/SSCLI and early versions of Mono).

Target Dependency Graph

Using Peli's excelent Quickgraph library, I've written a little app to render MSBuild dependency graphs. Below you can see all of the targets in a C# project along with their dependencies. You can find the fiend responsible for it over here.

You will need an SVG plugin to see the thing in all its glory.  Zoom in and use ALT to drag the image.

MSBuild Reference on MSDN2

Some minimal MSBuild docs have been posted to MSDN2.  At last we have some tasks documentation!  I've updated my MSBuild Bloggers and Resources list.

Jomo Fisher (the guy responsible for Microsoft.Common.targets I'm guessing) has been posting some very welcome information.

Another Bizarre Constellation

You had the .NET 2.0 System assembly and friends last time.  This time it's the turn of System.EnterpriseServices.  The boxes represent 'expanded' assemblies with all references shown (except to System and mscorlib).  The odd thing here is that 'System.Transations' has a reference to itself!  It seems to be the only assembly in the entire framework like this.  I don't know if this is an artifact of how they're setting up circular references or by design.  Can anyone shed some light on this?

Defending Full Length Feeds

Steve Maine puts the case for full length feeds much more eloquently then I ever could.  All I can say is that I'm not terribly fond of the new format.  If as Scoble says it's a bandwidth issue, are there not any alternatives?  Maybe we could syndicate out the supply of full length feeds.  They could be made available to a few specific IP addresses on the understanding that the owner mirror the feed.  There would be exposure in it for the mirror and choice for the users.  Mirrors could choose to differentiate themselves by the theme they use on their main page or how they organize the feeds.  Some popular sites already use this solution for their downloads.  Surely RSS feeds were designed to be syndicated!

System.Orgy (second try)

My experiment the other day to include svg content in my weblog failed dismaly. I've used a PNG file for those of you who couldn't see the image last time.  It's a shame bacause I've grown to like svg.

Here is a graph showing the .NET 2.0 'System' assembly and references. I knew about the circular dependency between 'System' and 'System.Xml' in .NET 1.x. I was a little supprised to see so many assemblies involved in .NET 2.0. Does anyone know what will have caused this sudden explosion?