Running Unit Tests in Visual Studio 2010: DebugTestsInClass

Problem

So, I am trying to run Unit tests in Visual Studio 2010.  However, it isn’t working.

I am getting this message in the status bar.

The key combination (Ctrl + R, Ctrl + C) is bound to command (DebugTestsInClass) which is currently not available.

I do have Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate so I expected everything to be available.

I did a Google and Bing and MSDN search for “DebugTestsInClass” and got a big fat nothing, which is pretty difficult to do these days. (Of course, that won’t happen for the next guy now that I have made this post!)

Anybody know what the DebugTestsInClass is and how to make it available?

Cause

Ok, so I found the issue.  My test project was created a long time ago in Visual Studio 2008 and using MBUnit.

I had changed the test to use no longer use MBUnit, but to use Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.UnitTestFramework.

I had create a new test project by click Test | New Test.

Then migrate my test classes to the new project.

I was unaware that the test project must be .NET 4, but yes it does.  Creating a new Test project allows me to use my Ctrl + R, Ctrl + C  functionality.

At first, I thought that using .NET 4 might be a problem because everything else we are doing is currently in .NET 3.5.  However, even though we are developing in .NET 3.5 currently, our test projects can be .NET 4 as they only run on dev and build machines.

Resolution

So it looks like multiple steps were required to move my test project from one testing library to another.

  1. Create a new Test project by going to Test | New Test.
  2. Move the classes to the new test project.
  3. Change the class syntax to match the syntax specified by Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.UnitTestFramework.
  4. Add any references needed.

 

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