Hi,

Some of my future unit / component test may run op to several hours. I would
like to run them simultaneously and on a different machine.

Arguably, I misuse the unit test framework for something beyond just "unit"
testing, but this is a quite convenient way.

Does anyone know is there a convenient / straightforward (open source?) way
to run unit tests (from vs 2008) on a remote server without installing
(owning) VSTS? I.e. using msbuild?

I am used to work with VSTS, but currently I am involved in a one men
project where VSTS is overkill, both from a financial as well as the
maintenance perspective.

Martijn Kaag
www.kaag.eu

Hello Martijn,

I'm not sure which feature you are talking on VSTS. Is it "Test Runs
window" which could be used for viewing the status of active, queued, and
completed test runs on remote computers? Please don't hesitate to correct
me if I misunderstood anything here.

If this the cause, Unit Testing has been supported on Visual Studio 2008
Profession Edition. You can choose VS 2008 Profession Edition, if VSTS is
not appropriate for your current project. For detailed information about VS
2008 Product Comparison, you can refer to the following document.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vst.../cc149003.aspx
[Visual Studio 2008 Product Comparison]

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any more concern. We are glad to
assist you.

Have a great day
Best regards,

Wen Yuan
Microsoft Online Community Support
==================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Hi Wen Yuan Wang,

I am already using VS2008 Proffesional.

In VSTS I am able to start a remote build, including the unit tests.

Some of my Unit Test take too long to run to run locally. I have a 6 idle
cores on a remote machine which i would like to utilize by running unit
tests.

Is is possible to run the test on a remote machine?

Kinf regards,
Martijn Kaag

Hello Martijn,

I still haven't understood what mentioned by "Remote Unit Test" or "Remote
Build". Do you mean the "Remote Build Server"?
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...48(VS.80).aspx

Could you please let me know the detailed steps about how do you perform
"remote unit test" or "remote build"? Or send me a screen-shooting? My
email address is v-wywang

If you have any more concern, please feel free to let me know. We are glad
to assist you.

Have a great day,
Best regards,

Wen Yuan
Microsoft Online Community Support
==================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Hi Wen Yuan,

I haven’t stated my problem clearly. Sorry.

I usually work with team foundation server. This allows me to start a build
on the team server from my workstation. This build includes the unit tests
and hence they do not affect the performance of my workstation.

Unfortunately, even on the build server, I am not able to run multiple
builds simultaneously.

My requirements are twofold:

1. I need to run a unit test on another machine, such that it does not
affect the performance of my local workstation.

2. I need to run multiple test simultaneously on this other machine, such
that I can take advantage of all the available cores on this machine.

A way to accomplish this is to build a command line tool (with some logging)
that calls the method that performs the unit test . I could run multiple
instances of this tool on another machine. As such, I utilize all the
performance I have and I do not affect the performance of my local
workstation.

This solution lacks the standard unit tests results – which is not that much
of a problem. However, it requires quite a lot of manual work to start a unit
test. I could use reflection in this tool to overcome this issue, but that
quilt take me up to a couple of days to build.

My question is whether the exists a more standardized solution to fulfil
these requirements.

Kind regards,
Martijn Kaag

Hello Martijn,
Thanks for your reply.

Yes, TFS build server doesn't support running multiple build tasks
simultaneously.
But, your remote machine is VERY strong. It's equipped with 6 cores. You
want to take advantage of all the available cores on this machine. Thus,
you build a command line tool. With this tool, you can run multiple
instances to perform Unit Tests on your remote Powerful machine
simultaneously. Now, your issue is that the command line tool doesn't
return unit test results for you, correct? If I misunderstood anything
here, please don't hesitate to correct me.

What's the command tool you use to perform unit test? Is it MSTest.exe?
As far as I know, MSTest will write test results to a well formatted xml
file. You can view it in an XML viewer such as Microsoft Internet Explorer
or Microsoft Visual Studio. Did you specify the option: /resultsfile? Such
as
MSTest /testcontainer:TestProject1.dll /resultsfile:testResults1.trx

Hope this helps. Let me know if there is anything unclear. We are glad to
assist you.
Have a great day,
Best regards,

Wen Yuan
Microsoft Online Community Support
==================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Hello Wen Yuan,

I have not build the command line tool yet and my main issue is that
starting and deploying this command line tool on another machine involves
manual work.

What I hoped for is a standardized solution that allows me to select a
unittest from Visual Studio and call a command like "run on unit test machine
XXX". By copying all the assembles to a remote machine each test could run in
its own context and they could be able to run simultaniously. From you
response I understand that such a utilty does not (yet) exist.

Given the current trend of utilizing excess server capacity this would be a
usefull feature in VS2008 sp1 thought ;-)

You did point me into a direction for building a command line tool myself:
MSTest.exe. Is this available as a seperate download - including depencies -
or does it require installing TFS? I am not too enthousiastic of installing
full TFS on my physical (i.e. non virtual) host machine.

Kind regards,

Martijn Kaag





--

NB The functionality I'd require is simular to
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...74(VS.80).aspx for load
testing.

--

Hello Martijn,
Thanks for your reply.

MSTest is a test tool in Visual Studio. It's not available as a separate
download. To use it, you have to install Visual Studio Editions which
supports Unit Test Feature (such as Professional or Team Suit) on your
remote machine. But you needn't to install TFS.

Hope this helps. Let me know if there is anything unclear. We are glad to
assist you.
Have a great day,
Best regards,

Wen Yuan
Microsoft Online Community Support
==================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Hi Wen Yuan,

I have all the information I need. Thanks for your help!

Kind regards

You are welcome, Martijn.
It's my pleasure to assist you.

Have a great day,
Best regards,

Wen Yuan
Microsoft Online Community Support
==================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.