Developer News

Test With… Silverlight/CoreCLRI have just released a new version of

Test With… Silverlight/CoreCLR

I have just released a new version of TestDriven.NET (2.7 Beta) with support for Silverlight/CoreCLR. Simply right click on the method you would like to execute with the CoreCLR and select 'Test With… Silverlight'. You can use this to execute any public methods (ad-hoc tests). I recommend you use 'Console.WriteLine' for any output messages. 'Trace.WriteLine' is supported by Silverlight's version of 'System.dll' but you would need to use something like DebugView to see the output.

Here is an example method being executed with Silverlight:

As shown above you do have access to the 'System.Windows.Browser.HtmlPage' static methods and properties (from the 'System.Silverlight' assembly). Hopefully people will find this feature useful for spelunking the Silverlight functionality.

I am working on proper unit testing support for Silverlight projects. At the moment none of the unit testing frameworks supported by TestDriven.NET (NUnit, MbUnit, MSTest or Zanebug) are compatible with the CoreCLR. I have had some success getting unit tests running using NUnitLite. You are welcome to contact me if you would like to try an early version of this.

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Another way of looking at this

Jamie A comments to an article on Channel Register:

Here’s a slightly less technical way of looking at the issue:

Microsoft essentially have 2 editions of a program. The first edition speaks English (User Interface) to the user, but in behind can speak French (COM) to other components.

The second edition also speaks English and French, but can also speak Russian (VSIP - Visual Studio Integration Programme).

Microsoft intends that your components speak Russian in order to extend Visual Studio. Their VSIP license agreement also states that you can only try to speak Russian to the second edition of the software. Attempting to speak Russian to the first edition is not allowed (even if it does speak the language).

Rather than try and speak Russian, Jamie has been using French. He has asked Visual Studio if it talks a certain dialect (COM interface), and it has said “oui”. So he uses that dialect to talk to Visual Studio in order to do what he needs.

The main problem from Microsoft’s point of view is that they didn’t intend for anyone to use that dialect of French in order to talk to Visual Studio. They only expected Russian to be used. However, there’s nothing that explicitly states this. Microsoft even has public notes on the French dialect.

Therefore, Jamie thinks he’s in the right because Microsoft have not said that speaking French is forbidden. Microsoft sees it the other way. And the way things are going, it looks like the decision is going to come from a judge or jury.

There will be some French lessons in a follow up post.