Developer News

Zhmicro ships latest version of Z++ Visual 07 IDE Zhmicro

Zhmicro ships latest version of Z++ Visual 07 IDE
Zhmicro LLC, a provider of enterprise software development tools, has announced availability of Z++ Visual 07 with Object-Oriented SQL. Visual 07 empowers software developers to create applications far beyond the capabilities of C++ and eliminates thei…

TestDriven.NET 2.7 on Orcas Express!

I’m happy to report that TestDriven.NET is working on Orcas Express! If you’d like to try out the new C# 3.0/VB 9.0 language features without installing the full Visual Studio Orcas Edition then now’s your chance. You should find this version works with Visual C#, VB and C++ Orcas Express CTP/.NET 3.5 Beta 1. Due to some changes Microsoft made to Orcas it works even more seamlessly than it does in Visual Studio 2005 Express!

NOTE: There is a chance this functionality will be disabled at 4 PM London time next Friday, 1 June 2007. Why find a technical solution to a problem when you have an army of lawyers?

Perpetuum Software ships Database Restyle
Perpetuum Software LLC has released Database Restyle, a new and powerful .Net component with a new approach and offering complete solution to database synchronization. Database synchronization performed manually can take too much time and inevitably in…

TestDriven.Net 2.11: Parameterized NUnit Tests

TestDriven.Net has always supported parameterized test methods when used with the MbUnit testing framework. When using MbUnit, it is common for a single test method to execute multiple tests with different parameter inputs. The most famous of these test types is the MbUnit RowTest.

Until now there has been little reason to add support for executing parameterized tests using NUnit (historically NUnit has only supported parameterless test methods). However Andreas Schlapsi has recently written an implementation of MbUnit’s RowTest using NUnit 2.4’s Addin extensibility mechanism.

I’ve updated TestDriven.Net 2.11 to better support NUnit add-ins and enable the targeting of RowTests and other parameterized test types. This version also includes a workaround for a log4net related issue that was causing a noticeable delay when launching the NUnit 2.4 GUI. You can find the release notes for TestDriven.Net 2.11 here.

To install the RowTest Extension for NUnit you will need to do the following:

1. Download and install TestDriven.Net 2.11.
2. Download the RowTest Extension for NUnit 2.4.5 (Binary).
3. Create a directory called ‘addins’ in ‘%ProgramFiles%\TestDriven.NET 2.0\NUnit\2.4′.
4. Copy the ‘NUnitExtension.RowTest.AddIn.dll’ file into the ‘addins’ directory (don’t put any non-assembly files there).
5. Add a reference to ‘NUnitExtension.RowTest.dll’ from your NUnit test project.

You can then start writing and executing MbUnit style RowTests inside your NUnit projects! You can find Peli’s original RowTest example here.

To view your RowTests inside the NUnit GUI you will need to use ‘Test With > NUnit 2.4′. You will find this option on the ‘Solution Explorer’ project context menu.

Thanks to Wayne Brantley for letting me know about the RowTest Extension for NUnit.

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.