I am currently developing for Silverlight 4.0 and after mostly creating class libraries with TDD in usual C# (before SL) I can say that my current process is way slower than I am used to. (I think this can be said about any UI code compared to library classes, but here I think its really serious issue for me.)
I am wondering what techniques can be recommended to increase SL development performance.
I am mainly concerned about hard to test code (from my POV) – MVVM & UI – what can be done to improve performance here, I am thinking maybe theres a way to use a smaller sandbox somehow and test/debug control behaviour outside of scope of whole application, its pretty clear to me that me running whole application to test whether a new dialog box works correctly isnt fastest way and I could improve performance if I had a way to test this dialog alone for example, and there are probably other ways I cannot think of that can be a solution too.
EDIT: 1)here is something that I found useful , for TDD there is now a project that allows console runner to run tests so you dont have to run silverlight tests in browser & can integrate in your build process LightHouse
2) found following page, it provides some idea about a possible approach one could use to test view:
http://fohjin.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-test-your-xaml-behavior-using.html
there is no magic beautiful way and this one can be utilized but having to name all controls for example is a must to get this to work which isnt very good often
Statlight for the build server.
AgUnit to allow resharper to run silverlight tests.
WebAii for automation testing.
I’m not a fan of SLUT, as to run an individual test you have to cut and paste its name, and it doesnt remember it until you let it run all the way through, which I rarely do if I’m debugging.