Getting started with unit testing in VS2010? - unit-testing

I'm new to both unit testing and Visual Studio 2010 (just upgraded from 2008). I'm interested in using VS2010's new built-in unit testing tools, but would like to get the lay of the land first. I haven't been able to find any resources or tutorials on unit testing with VS2010 specifically - has anyone found a good walk-through?
I'm also open to persuasion that we should stick with NUnit or the like, if anyone knows a reason to avoid the built-in tools.

PEX and PEX Tutorial

Here's a Channel9 video titled "TestDriven Development with Visual Studio 2010".
She goes through the basics of the Test Project, and it seems a good intro, Channel9-style!
Aside:
This is vintage 2008 material, and the GUI of Visual Studio doesn't look like RTM. You can see though, when she selects text, that it appears to highlight ala 2010.

I prefer using open source tools such as NUnit, the reason is, if you use the built-in testing tools in your projects, those will not be available to developers running express versions of Visual Studio. This might not be a good enough reason for you but it is for me, specially when you work with .NET open source projects.
Good luck!

Related

How do Install Microsoft Fakes (Unit Test Isolation) on VS 2013 Professional edition

I want to start writing unit test cases using the Microsoft Fakes framework in Visual Studio 2013 Professional.
Please advise on how I can achieve this.
Fakes is only available with VS Ultimate and Premium. There is no installer that will allow you add the fakes functionality to VSPro
http://www.visualstudio.com/products/compare-visual-studio-products-vs
Although Fakes is only available to VS Ultimate/Enterprise users, its predecessor, Moles, is available for free.
They're largely the same, except Fakes uses a different naming scheme, and plays slightly better with non-MSTest testing frameworks.
There is also an open-source alternative named Prig which I know nothing about.

Unit Testing Frameworks for Visual Studio 2012 Cons/Pros

I want to get started on Unit Testing in C++ (pure C++, not .NET), since I have never done it before. Always used assert and cout.
So far, the only good Question with detailed answers, I have found is https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13699/choosing-a-c-unit-testing-tool-framework, but it is dated to 2008.
I would like to hear some opinions about currently available C++ Unit Testing compatible with Visual Studio 2012. What are their Cons and Pros ? How easy/hard to learn them(i.e availability of learning materials) ? How Popular they are ? Are they being actively developed, supported ?
There are several frameworks that I am aware of: Google's Testing Framework, Boost Testing Lib.
(Also, in addition to Visual Studio, I use Intel Parallel Studio XE 2013, primarily for static analysis)
At the moment we only use the unit testing functionality which comes with VS12 (Premium). We also tested other Frameworks (e.g. NUnit), but for now VS12 testing suits well.
I use TUT unit testing framework: http://tut-framework.sourceforge.net/

Can we get native C++ code coverage in VS2012 or VS2010 without MSTest?

We would like to measure code coverage for our own automated regression test system run over a fairly large native app. This is a sophisticated, scripted test system using the inbuilt scripting of our app. It has thousands of tests and is not going to be replaced by MSTest unit tests.
Whilst we're using VS2012 (Premium) as the IDE currently it is still compiled with the VS2010 compilers & libraries. That could change sooner if it was a prerequisite to getting code coverage going.
We can do separate builds for this - instrumenting is not a problem.
I'm just confused reading the MS documentation which seems to all start from an assumption you're running unit tests using their inbuilt test framework. That's when I'm not struggling to find stuff which actually talks about native support for ALM in the first place!
thanks
Visual Studio 2012's code coverage tool is entirely separate from the test execution system (full disclosure: I wrote it, but the team that inherited it after I left Microsoft removed some fairly useful functionality). It was rewritten from the ground up in VS 2012 to dynamically instrument native (x86 and x86-64) and managed code (.NET and Silverlight) when it loads into the process instead of modifying executables on disk.
You can find CodeCoverage.exe in "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Team Tools\Dynamic Code Coverage Tools".
To collect data:
CodeCoverage.exe collect /output:foo.coverage foo.exe foos_args
A configuration file (there's a default one in that directory called CodeCoverage.config) can be specified to control collection.
To analyze the coverage data, you can open foo.coverage in Visual Studio 2012 or use the coverage tool itself to do the analysis:
CodeCoverage.exe analyze /output:results.xml foo.coverage
Note: for instrumentation to take place, .pdb files must be discovered for your modules. Since you are building with 2010, they may not work with 2012's DIA so you may have to rebuild with 2012's toolset. If you are not seeing the modules you expect in the coverage analysis, pass /include_skipped_modules to the analyze command; there will be a "reason" attribute telling you why the module was skipped (excluded, no debug information, etc.).
Edit: Also, unlike previous versions of Visual Studio, 2012's coverage file format is completely self-contained. The modules and .pdbs don't need to be present at analysis time.
I realize this is an old post, but I believe the answer still is relevant.
With all the things that I used to have at my disposal in C#, I didn't really like what I saw when I moved to Visual C++. Also, like you the MSTests only partially worked for me; I'm used to have my own test applications as well.
Basically what I wanted was the following:
Run MS tests or an EXE file
Get code coverage right in Visual Studio.
After doing some research, I noticed that VS Enterprise supports this feature today with test adapters.
If you're not on VSE, I noticed there are some other tools, each providing users with an independent UI. Personally I don't like that; I want my coverage right in Visual Studio, preferably in Visual Studio Community edition.
So I decided to build this addin myself and - while it's not as sophisticated as VSE - it does the trick for me.
I wrote a VSIX code coverage tool on https://github.com/atlaste/CPPCoverage . Basically it manages the highlighting in Visual Studio, generates a clickable report, and integrates in solution explorer.
For the coverage measurements themselves, I used to use https://opencppcoverage.codeplex.com/ . Basically that allows you to perform code coverage tests on any debuggable (native) executable. Nowadays, I'm using my own code coverage measuring tools (which are open sourced above as well).

Visual C++ 2008 Express Or Eclipse Ganymede With CDT

I'm learning C++, and I want to know from those who are very good developers now: What is the best IDE, Visual C++ 2008 Express or Eclipse Ganymede with CDT? Remember that I'm using Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate. Thanks!
The book that I'm reading is from Deitel: C++ How to Program, 5/e, because I don't know if the code of the book supports Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express.
I'm using both regularly now.
Visual studio is easier and more user friendly. I have issues with it though. They force you to do a number of things for reasons the benefit Microsoft and not you. It's free so you can't complain that much. Support is non existent but there's google for help.
Eclipse Gallileo does some difficult things startlingly well, but does some simple stuff startlingly badly. Such as when you compile if there's an error you get no visual indication. You have to open the problems window to see the errors. DOH! Eclipse is nearly as good as visual studio overall and is one of the best when using linux. The new version of the debugger has some very nice new features as well. Support is poor to non existent but there's google for help.
I tried codeblocks. The support was not very good to rude. I found it difficult to do anything serious with.
If you're working on Windows, MSVC++ 2008 Express is probably the one to go with, since it's the platform's native compiler. If you don't have any experience with Eclipse already, definitely go with MSVC. I've found Eclipse to be very counter-intuitive, but that's me, you may love it.
I use codeblocks :) I like it a lot actually. Its interface is really easy to use.
I am having issues with MSVS right now which I will be posting a question about here in a few minutes.
Either will do you fine at this stage, but on balance I think you will find VS 2008 Express a little more straightforward unless you have much Eclipse experience.
That said, once you begin developing your OS you may find that you need to upgrade to the full (non-Express) version.
I use both Visual Studio 2005 Pro (at work) and Eclipse CDT (for personal projects).
I do prefer to use Eclipse because I program meanly Qt applications on Windows with it. The Qt integration module is really good (and available freely at http://qt.nokia.com/).
Once you are there, you could give a try also to Qt's lightweight IDE: Qt Creator.
If you are going to do C++ GUI programming, I think you should definitively go with Eclipse CDT and the Qt Integration plugin. I've programmed (and suffering) several years of MFC before learning Qt and I will never go back!
Hope it helps!

Static-code analyzer: unmanaged C++ Visual Studio 2008

I develop commercial unmanaged C++ app on Visual Studio 2008, and I want to add a static-code analysis tool.
Any recommendations?
I think it would be real nice if the tool can be integrated into MSVC.
I'm thinking about PC-Lint + Visual Lint
However, I have been taking a hard look at Coverity, Understand, and Klockwork as well.
Price isnt really the issue. I want opinions from people who actually used the tool for unmanaged C++ on MSVC, and they just absolutely loved it.
Lastly, VSTS and Intel Parallel Studio now also offer static code analysis. Nice~
Note: related post suggest Coverity is the best (?) (see last 2 posts)
Beyond all those you mentioned, VS Team Developer edition comes bundled with a nice static analysis tool called prefast. Its (obviously..) well integrated into the IDE, and accessible via the menus.
Its in fact a public release of an MS internal tool - a thin version of a tool called Prefix they run on their builds. Personally, when I faced the same decision, prefast sufficed.
I work for RedLizard building Goanna, a C++ static analysis plugin for Visual Studio. Its focus is on desktop use by a programmer. You can run it on individual files, just as you do the compiler, and it can give you results quickly.
There is a trial available. Right-click a file, select Run Goanna, and the results appear in the Visual Studio warnings list.
You can try CppDepend, a pretty complete c and c++ static analyzer, well integrated with VS 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2015.
I just started using cppcheck which I like very much due to the low noise.
Although it does not integrate directly with Visual Studio 2008, VS can be customized and you should be able to integrate it directly into the IDE.
I use PVS-Studio static code analyzer.
This static code analyzer good integrated with Visual Studio 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013.
It has many additional features:
Verification of files which were recently modified several days ago;
Verification of files by their filenames from within the text file
list;
version control systems integration; ability to operate fro m command line
interface;
«False Alarms» marking; saving and loading of analysis
results;
utilizing all available cores and processors;
etc...