Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 Beta Released–information on Test and Lab Management Changes

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The Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 Beta is now ready for download! General availability as well as download for MSDN subscribers is now ready and you can access them via the links below. Service Pack 1 Beta of course comes with a “go live” license which means you can start using the product in production. Upgrading from the Beta to the final release of SP1, when it is available, will be supported and very easy.

  • Service Pack 1 Beta - General availability download
  • Service Pack 1 Beta – MS DN Subscribers only download

Since the launch of Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4 earlier this year, we have also released some key functionality for our customers via the Feature Packs. We have also stayed in touch with the customers and collected feedback on issues that they have been facing. The Service Pack release is intended to address the key hurdles that you are facing, and there are some nice features and improvements included in this release.

Please refer to Brian Harry’s blog for the the high level details on all of the capability areas. In this post I will focus on the changes in the areas of the Test and Lab Management capabilities of VS 2010. In addition to fixing the high priority issues, this release also contains the fixes for customers (QFEs) that we have released earlier – so it is cumulative set of changes and I would encourage your users to upgrade to the Service Pack. In this release we have enabled unit testing for .NET 3.5, and addressed around 50 issues reported by our customers.

In the spirit of full transparency, here is the list of issues we have addressed. Please try out the release and let us know your feedback at the earliest, so that we have the chance to address any remaining top issues before we close the final release of the service pack.

Basic Unit Testing Support for the .NET Framework 3.5

Visual Studio 2010 SP1 includes the following basic support for unit tests that target the .NET Framework 3.5:

  • Create new unit test projects and target them to the .NET Framework 3.5.
  • Run unit tests that target the .NET Framework 3.5 from Visual Studio 2010 SP1 on your local machine.
  • Run unit tests that target the .NET Framework 3.5 using mstest.exe from the command prompt.
  • Run unit tests on a build agent as part of a build.

The capabilities listed above also enable developers to write unit tests, and integration tests for SharePoint 2010 applications using Visual Studio 2010 SP1.

The following are the known limitations of the support we are enabling:

  • The default target framework in test projects is the .NET Framework 4. If you upgrade test projects from Visual Studio 2008, they will be upgraded to target the .NET Framework 4 by default. You can edit the project properties and explicitly re-target the project to the .NET Framework 3.5.
  • In the .NET Framework 3.5, multi-targeting is supported for test projects that contain only unit tests. The .NET Framework 3.5 does not support any other test type, such as coded UI or load test. The re-targeting is blocked for test types other than unit tests.
  • Execution of .NET Framework 3.5 tests is supported only in the default host adapter. It is not supported using the ASP.NET host adapter. ASP.NET applications that have to run in ASP.NET development server context must be .NET Framework 4-compatible.
  • Data collection support is disabled when you execute tests that support .NET Framework 3.5 multi-targeting. You can run code coverage using the Visual Studio command line tools.
  • Unit tests using the .NET Framework 3.5 unit tests cannot run on a remote machine.

Issues/Bugs that got fixed in SP1

Web/Load Test

  • Crash in WebTest Results viewer when the test is executing
  • OutOfMemory exception when doing Find/Replace in Request
  • Devenv crashes after clicking on "threshold violations" hyperlink in test result status bar
  • Counters on "Page Response Time"  graph disappears after run gets completed
  • Writing results to LoadTest DB takes long time to complete
  • Performance Counters are dropped during load test execution

UnitTest/TestExecution

  • .Net 3.5 support for unit test (See above for more details…)
  • Spurious TestContext output of inner tests contained inside Ordered test
  • Performance issue with loading test in test controller
  • Test run hangs when QTAgent fails to start or hangs in Main() function
  • Running large amount of tests on a Lab Environment leaves some tests in ‘Not Executed’ state
  • Code Coloring for Code Coverage is not working for unmanaged C++
  • TestCaseId coming out to be the SAME for all test cases that are associated with the same test method

TCM Server

  • Warehouse rebuild takes too long
  • Reports: Resetting automated test results can cause 2 changes of a point to appear in warehouse as the current version

Microsoft Test Manager

  • Support for Expression Encoder 4.0 in Manual testing
  • Fixes we released as part of hotfix for Microsoft Test Manager
  • ‘Configure Diagnostic Data Adapter-Event Log’ page is truncated in localized version of Microsoft Test Manager
  • Analyzing test result causes it to become most recent result in the test point trend
  • Remember Right-To-Left language settings across MTM sessions
  • Query-based test suite repopulation takes too long for large suites
  • Microsoft Test Runner : Crash after choosing browser type for FireFox playback
  • Unable to collect Intellitrace data if application under test is launched as a part of action recording for the test case
  • Parameterization: Can't bind parameter to password field when creating Action Recording
  • Microsoft Test Runner: Show test case description in MTR
  • API: Attachment count for test results returns 0 when iterating through large amount of test results
  • Performance improvements for Microsoft Test Manager

Lab Manager

  • VS 2010 Lab Management update
  • Build deploy/test workflow can't use drop locations on DFS or WebDav shares
  • Unable to select configuration for existing builds that have more than one configuration in a Build deploy/test workflow
  • Build Service Host crashes if it is running in Lab Mode and service account does not have admin privileges
  • When build agent and lab agent are installed on a non-lab managed VM, the build agent fail to start
  • Lab Management: can't change SCVMM Server configured for a TFS Application Tier

FastForward/CodedUITest

  • Fixes we released as part rollup hotfix
  • Coded UI Test Project is incompatible with Setup/Deploy projects in the same solution
  • UI Test Controls added to UIMap are case-insensitive
  • Creating Coded UI Test from existing action recording does not show up alternate credentials dialog
  • BrowserWindow.FindMatchingControls() throws UITestException

I am looking forward to hearing from you – my team and I are excited about supporting you and staying touch as you adopt these capabilities!

Cheers!