dotCover 2017.2 Help

Executing Tests and Analyzing Results

dotCover provides several ways to execute unit tests. Whichever way you choose, execution progress, results, and output are displayed in the Unit Test Sessions window.

Before running coverage analysis, make sure that the PDB information exists for all target assemblies. The safest choice would be to set the Debug as the build configuration.

Different ways of executing and covering unit tests

There are following ways to run, debug or cover unit tests:

  • Use one of the ways to execute tests in the current document.
  • Use one of the ways to execute tests in the project/solution.
  • If there are existing unit test sessions, you can run, debug or cover some or all tests in a session:
    • Select tests that you want to execute in the Unit Test Sessions window and click Run Unit Tests ThemedIcon RunTest Screen Gray / Debug Unit Tests ThemedIcon Debug Screen Gray / Cover Unit Tests ThemedIcon JetBrainsDotCoverPresentationVsResourcesUnitTestingCoverageCover Screen Gray on the toolbar or press Ctrl+T R / Ctrl+T D / Ctrl+T H.
    • To run or cover all tests in the session, click Run All Tests ThemedIcon RunAll Screen Gray or Cover All Tests ThemedIcon JetBrainsDotCoverPresentationVsResourcesUnitTestingCoverageCoverAll Screen Gray on the toolbar or alternatively, choose ReSharper | Unit Tests | Run Current Session or ReSharper | Unit Tests | Cover All Tests from Solution in the main menu or press Ctrl+T Y / Ctrl+T K.
  • You can run coverage on a remote machine.

As tests are running in a unit test session, the execution progress is shown in the status bar under the toolbar of the Unit Test Sessions window and the Stop Execution ThemedIcon StopTest Screen Gray button becomes active. You can click this button to abort execution or coverage analysis of the tests. You can run multiple unit test sessions simultaneously. However, when you debug tests, only one test session can be executed at a time.

If necessary, you can enable the Track Running Test ThemedIcon TrackRun Screen Gray option on the toolbar. If it is on, the selection in the test tree switches automatically to the test that is currently running and the output panel always shows output of the current test during the execution.

You can also enable the Auto Scroll Output When Running Test ThemedIcon ScrollToBottom Screen Gray option to follow output of tests as they are running.

If necessary, you can always repeat execution or coverage analysis of the tests that you executed last by clicking Repeat Previous Run ThemedIcon Rerun Screen Gray on the toolbar, pressing Ctrl+T T or choosing ReSharper | Unit Tests | Repeat Previous Run in the menu.

Analysing execution results and output

When the execution is over, the results are visualized in the Unit Test Sessions window.

unit test sessions

The output pane (which you can place on the right or on the bottom using the Show Output ThemedIcon PreviewToggle Screen Gray button on the toolbar) displays output of the selected test. If the test is failed, dotCover also adds short information on the failure and/or displays the stack trace of an exception. You can use clickable links in the output pane to navigate directly to types and methods involved with the failure. If the output displays a link to a file that does not belong to the solution, you can click this link to open the file in an external application associated with the corresponding file type or Ctrl-click to open it in Visual Studio.

By default, dotCover wraps long lines in the output according to the current width of the output area. If necessary, you choose not to wrap long lines by clearing the Wrap long lines in Unit Test Session output check-box on the Tools | Unit Testing page of dotCover options.

On the status bar, you can see the total number of tests in the session as well as number of tests in different states:

Unit test filters
By default, tests in all states are shown, but you can click the corresponding icons to filter tests by their state. You can also Ctrl-click several icons to display tests in several different states. Status of each test in the Unit Test Sessions window is displayed with one of the following icons:

  • ThemedIcon RunningTest Screen Gray — the unit test is currently executing.
  • ThemedIcon TestPending Screen Gray — the unit test is scheduled for execution in the current run.
  • ThemedIcon StatusUnknown Screen Gray — the unit test was not executed.
  • ThemedIcon Success Screen Gray — the unit test passed in the lats test run.
  • ThemedIcon Error Screen Gray — the unit test failed in the lats test run.
  • ThemedIcon Ignore Screen Gray — the unit test was ignored in the last test run. Either it has the corresponding attribute (e.g. Ignore for NUnit tests) or it is included in a category that is ignored in dotCover settings.
  • ThemedIcon StatusAborted Screen Gray — the unit test was aborted in the last test run.
  • ThemedIcon StatusInconclusive Screen Gray — the unit test was started but dotCover could not read the the test runner output. This could be a sign of an error occurring in the test runner.

The same icons are used to display status of grouping items (classes, projects, etc.)

The icons are also used on each session's tab to display the overall execution result of the sessions.

The corresponding icons above the test session tree show how many tests are in each of the status. The ThemedIcon UnitSession Screen Gray icon shows the total number of tests in the session.
Using these icons, you can filter the tree so that only tests in the corresponding status are displayed.

Analysing coverage results

After running coverage analysis of unit tests, you can study coverage results in the Coverage pane of the Unit Test Sessions window. The pane displays the code coverage tree of the whole solution. You can also switch to the hot spot view by clicking Hot Spots on the toolbar.

dotCover unit test sessions

Different ways of exploring coverage results are described in the Working with Coverage Results section.

Customizing execution process

By default, dotCover uses unit test project settings to define which .NET Framework version and processor architecture should be used when executing tests.

When tests in your project use (sometimes indirectly or implicitly) an assembly based on CLR2 and your project already targets CLR4, errors may occur during test execution. You can avoid such situation, by specifying explicitly what CLR (.NET Framework) should be used. To do so, use the Default .NET Framework version selector on the ReSharper | Options | Tools | Unit Testing page of dotCover options. This preference affects tests running under NUnit, XUnit and MSpec test frameworks. It has no effect on tests running under MsTest yet.

You can also change the platform architecture (32-bit or 64-bit) using the Default platform architecture selector on that options page.

If necessary, you can override these settings for specific unit test session using the Options selector on the toolbar.

Studying execution log

Unit Test Sessions window includes test execution log that lets you separate problems related to test execution process from unit tests code.
You will normally need to check execution log if some of your tests have the 'Inconclusive' state after execution, which could be a sign of an error occurring in the test runner.

If you have errors reported either by the test runner or dotCover, the number of errors is displayed on the right side of the window's status bar, else OK is shown.
To display or hide the execution log, click the Log ThemedIcon SessionLog Screen Gray button.

By default, only events with the 'Error' severity level are logged. If necessary, you can change the minimum severity level. To do so, either right-click the log area and choose the desired severity level or use the Show log entries... selector on the Tools | Unit Testing page of dotCover options.

You can also copy the whole log to the clipboard by choosing the corresponding command in the context menu.

Last modified: 14 December 2017