How to run unit testing tests from command line?

54
votes

I googled and found the below helpful references. Currently I want to run all from the command-line (for easy of execution & quickness) in cases:

  1. A specific test (ie. a test written by a method marked [TestMethod()])
  2. All tests in a class
  3. All impacted tests of the current TFS pending change of mine.
  4. All tests
  5. All tests except the ones marked as category [TestCategory("some-category")]

I'm not sure how can I write a correct command for my needs above.

References:

  1. the MSTest.exe http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182487.aspx
  2. the MSTest.exe's detailed options http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182489.aspx
  3. obtaining the result http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182488.aspx

[Edit]

After a while, I found the below useful tips.

  1. run Visual Studio unit tests by using MSTest.exe, located at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\MSTest.exe in my case.
  2. using /testcontainer:Path\To\Your\TestProjectAssembly.dll to indicate where your tests are coded. You can specify multiple '/testcontainer' options if required.
  3. using /test:TestFilter to filter the tests to run. Note that this filter is applied to the full test method name (ie. FullNamespace.Classname.MethodName)
4
unit-testingvisual-studio-2010command-line
This is invaluable - I was getting an 'out of memory' exception when running from within Visual Studio 2010 due to some relatively memory hungry test code (using about 300MB or so of heap memory). Running from the command line solved my issues. - dodgy_coder
I just get "no tests to execute". I guess this doesn't work for visual studio 2019 - Triynko

4 Answers

16
votes

Currently I can have some answers for my needs:

  1. A specific test (ie. a test written by a method marked [TestMethod()])
    Use MSTest.exe /container:TheAssemblyContainingYourSpecificTest /test:TheSpecificTestName

  2. All tests in a class
    Use MSTest.exe /container:TheAssemblyContainingYourClass /test:TheClassNameWithFullNamespace
    Note that the /test: is the filter which uses the full name of the class when filtering.

The others are still left unknown. Please disscuss if you know how.

14
votes

For number 4. To run all tests in an assembly it's simply:

mstest /testcontainer:YourCompiledTestAssembly.dll

5
votes

For question 

5 All tests except the ones marked as category [TestCategory("some-category")]

Use  

mstest.exe /testcontainer:yourTests.dll  /category:"!some-category"

If you need to exclude more than one category, use

  

mstest.exe /testcontainer:yourTests.dll  /category:"!group1&!group2"

Reference:  /category filter 

3
votes

You might be interested by the Gallio bundle. It provides a free common automation platform to run your tests (MSTest, MbUnit, NUnit, xUnit, etc.) with various test runners (GUI, command line, PoSh, plugins for 3rd party tools, etc.)

In particular you may want to use Gallio.Echo which is a nice command line test runner:

Gallio.Echo

The Gallio test runners have also filtering capabilities to run a subset of your unit tests only (e.g. per category, per fixture, etc.)