CodePlex

Calling All xUnit.net Extenders!

Brad Wilson — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 09:44:00 GMT

We're rapidly approaching the point where we want to finalize what's going into the 1.0 version of xUnit.net.

I know we made lots of big changes from Beta 1 to Beta 2. We felt like these changes, while somewhat disrupting, provided a better foundation for xUnit.net going forward. We're not planning any more big sweeping changes; our feature & issue list for the proposed Release Candidate 1 is still relatively small.

You may have also noticed that we removed much of the source code from the xUnit.net project itself. All that remains is the source to xunit.dll and xunit.console.exe (and the associated unit tests). The rest of the source code -- including the TestDriven.NET and Resharper runners -- has been moved to the xUnit.net Extensions project. The Extensions project will issue releases at the same time as the xUnit project, with the first release being extensions suitable for use with RC1.

By keeping a tight core with well-defined and well-used extension points, we're hoping that releases of xUnit.net itself will be very infrequent; ideally, we release 1.0 and never have to release again. Ideally. :)

We believe that most of the activity will move to the xUnit.net Extensions project, hopefully with many community contributions, both inside and outside of Microsoft. Yes, we are planning to accept community contributions!

The call to action today, then, is two-fold.

First, if you think there are any missing features and/or outstanding bugs in the core of xUnit.net itself (that is, in xunit.dll and the console runner xunit.console.exe), now is the time to speak up. If you haven't already, please start using Beta 2 and let us know what's missing from the core.

Second, there is an open issue for the Release Candidate titled Flesh out ITypeInfo, IMethodInfo, IAttributeInfo. These three interfaces are used within the runner infrastructure to determine which classes contain tests, which methods are tests, and which attributes they are decorated with.

These interfaces aren't nearly as full featured as their reflection counterparts. They contain just enough information for the xUnit.net runner infrastructure to be able to inspect and run our own test types (plus our NUnit extension, [RunWithNUnit]). Since these interfaces are defined in the core xunit.dll library, we'd like to know which things are missing from them that would be required by extenders.

Specifically:

People implementing ITestClassCommand (for [RunWith()] support) will likely be using all three
People implementing custom test types (deriving from [Fact] and/or implementing ITestCommand) will likely be using IMethodInfo and IAttributeInfo

If you're planning to do either of these activities, we'd love for feedback on these interfaces.

For existing implementations of these interfaces, there is a reflection wrapper inside of xunit.csproj (in Reflector.cs) and several Resharper wrappers in xunitext.runner.jetbrains.csproj (in TypeWrapper.cs, MethodWrapper.cs, and AttributeWrapper.cs).

If you have feedback on anything regarding the xUnit.net 1.0 RC1, and especially around these three interfaces, please use the xUnit.net forums for discussions. If you need to contact me directly, please use my CodePlex Contact Page.

Thanks, and happy extending!

xUnit.net Beta 2 Released

Brad Wilson — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 11:58:00 GMT

We just pushed the button to ship beta 2 of xUnit.net.

There are a lot of breaking changes enumerated in this forum post, so please read before upgrading. Most of the changes affect consumers of the xUnit SDK, but there are a few that affect users as well. The following issues and features were added or addresses in beta 2:

Technorati Tags: xUnit.net , Unit Testing

p&p Summit, Redmond WA, Nov 5-9

Brad Wilson — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 18:27:00 GMT

It's hard to believe that another p&p Summit is almost here... the time has really flown by. This year I'll be co-presenting twice. The line-up of keynote talks looks positively awesome this year! (Despite Scott Hansleman's protestations to the contrary, he does belong in that group of intelligent and talented people. ;)

The first talk, "Yet another agile talk on agility", is one where Peter and I will answer questions from the audience about our experiences running agile teams, inside and outside of Microsoft. We run the talk just like an agile project, a technique that I first saw used by Brian Button. You start by creating an initial backlog (i.e., people ask questions and you write them down), then you go through an iterative stack-ranking and execution (i.e., answer them) process with time-boxed iterations (i.e., 5 minutes). It's pretty interesting process and never yields the same talk twice. It's also awesome in its ability to require no prepartion. ;)

The second talk, "Dependency Injection Frameworks", is one where Scott and I will talk about the work we've done evolving ObjectBuilder 2.0, as well as some sample containers that we have on the ObjectBuilder CodePlex project space. A lot of the work there has come from real container needs in the wild, and some of the concerns about the complicated architecture of ObjectBuilder 1.0 have been addressed. In addition to our new containers and new architecture, we'll show off some of the new core features we've added, including a lightweight version of the CAB EventBroker and a method-interception system modeled after Enterprise Library's Policy Injection App Block.

I'm trying to make a commitment to be there all through the first 3 days so that people can sideline me both before and after the talks. Unfortunately, I won't be able to be there for the last 2 days. If you're going to be there, and want to talk about any of the projects I've got going on right now (CodePlex, ObjectBuilder, xUnit.net, etc.) please don't hesitate to find me. You can also use the Contact page here on the blog if you want to make sure I find time for you.

Hope to see you there!

We Shipped CodePlex Client Yesterday

Brad Wilson — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 08:20:00 GMT

Yesterday we shipped an edit-merge-commit command line source control client for CodePlex projects.

Read all about it...

Tags: CodePlex, TFS, Source Control, Edit-Merge-Commit, CodePlex Client, cpc

Teamprise available for CodePlex Users

Brad Wilson — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:41:00 GMT

Congratulations (and many, many thanks) to Martin Woodward and team for their launch of Teamprise for CodePlex users. This free version of Teamprise allows users from all platforms -- not just Windows -- to access the source code repositories on CodePlex. That have a great stand-alone client as well as Eclipse integration.

I recommend all CodePlex project developers and coordinators give this client a look.

Tags: CodePlex, TFS, Teamprise, Eclipse, Open Source

Thoughts on Code Coverage

Brad Wilson — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 15:43:00 GMT

Jim has been tossing around the idea of describing our thoughts on Code Coverage. We collaborated on a blog post today that talks about how we think about it.

Are you on an agile team? Do you do code coverage? What does it mean to your team?

Tags: Agile, Code Coverage

CodePlex is Hiring

Brad Wilson — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 15:19:00 GMT

If the idea of working with me and Scott doesn't scare you senseless, then what's wrong with you? Erm, I mean, apply for a job with us! That's it. :)

(I'd mention that you also get to work with other cool people, including Jim Newkirk of NUnit fame, but that's not really all that scary.)

Scott Densmore Joins CodePlex

Brad Wilson — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 09:07:00 GMT

It's been hard to keep a lid on this one, but Scott has finally blogged it.

The CodePlex war room is about to get real interesting, folks. :)

CodePlex (and blog) Goes Live!

Brad Wilson — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 12:04:00 GMT

Yesterday we made the marketing announcements about CodePlex, and removed the beta banners from the site. We also launched a blog on MSDN that will contain posts about the CodePlex site, team, and related activities.

The month in beta was very helpful for us. It allowed us to eliminate a lot of the most critical issues fleshed out by our users, as well as test the scalability of the application. We're very pleased with the results so far. :)

We've had some questions about why the project registration process still appears to be moderated. I just wanted to reiterate Jonathan's answer in the forum that the project requests are being queued, but not moderated. We want to ensure that we can stay ahead of the scalability needs of the site, and for a little while that means that project creation will take a some time to get finalized. We're also giving a little extra assistance as necessary to people starting new projects, to help improve their success during the on-boarding period.

It's worth noting that there are two exceptions to our queueing policy: we're not approving any requests for test projects, and we're not approving any requests for private projects. As to the latter, CodePlex is philosophically about providing a place for community software development, and we feel private projects are not necessarily in keeping with that charter. Everything that you put onto the site is available for viewing by everybody, including anonymous users.

My New Job

Brad Wilson — Tue, 16 May 2006 10:00:00 GMT

Yesterday was my first day on the CodePlex team. (Jim's announcement)

One of the things that drew me to patterns & practices 15 months ago was the opportunity to work with Jim Newkirk. Unbeknownst to me at the time, he was planning to leave the group pretty much the week after I started, so our interactions were relegated to lunches amd occasional demos of the stuff he was working on.

When the time came, it seemed like a natural thing to want to hook back up with Jim. CodePlex is a great project that could have significant impact on the development community, and I'm very excited to be part of the team!