Question

I have configured Specflow to target the MsTest framework (instead of NUnit) by specifying it like this in the app.config of my ‘specs’ class library:

<configSections>
    <section name="specFlow"
   type="TechTalk.SpecFlow.Configuration.ConfigurationSectionHandler, TechTalk.SpecFlow"/>
</configSections>

<specFlow>
 <unitTestProvider name="MsTest.2010" />
</specFlow>

So once it’s in place, I can see that my test fixtures are produced correctly by the Specflow custom tool, with correct TestClassAttribute() and methods, etc:

[System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("TechTalk.SpecFlow", "1.3.3.0")]
[System.Runtime.CompilerServices.CompilerGeneratedAttribute()]
[Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting.TestClassAttribute()]
...

The specs class builds, but now I cannot run the tests using the Test –> Run –> All Tests in Solution inside Visual Studio 2010 on my vista 64 box. Why doesn’t VS recognize these as valid tests to run?

Answer 1

I had to recreate the project as a Test Project and not merely a Class Library — because I had started development with NUnit and SpecFlow, I had created a vanilla class library to hold my specs that had the NUnit attributes decorated. I thought I could simply change the app.config of this existing project to point at the mstest framework and stop using NUnit, but VS2010 never recognized the tests, despite the correct creation of the stubs by specflow’s custom tool.

So…I added a new Test Project to my solution, moved all of my spec code to that new project, then recompiled, and viola, VS2010 recognizes the tests. I’m sure there is a GUID it is looking for in the XML of the .csproj file or something that tells it to wire up the testing framework, but I didn’t dig that far.

Hope this helps someone.