NUnit Test Run Order

Question

By default nunit tests run alphabetically. Does anyone know of any way to set the execution order? Does an attribute exist for this?

Answer 1

You should not depend on the order in which the test framework picks tests for execution. Tests should be isolated and independent. In that they should not depend on some other test setting the stage for them or cleaning up after them. They should also produce the same result irrespective of the order of the execution of tests (for a given snapshot of the SUT)

I did a bit of googling. As usual, some people have resorted to sneaky tricks (instead of solving the underlying testability/design issue

• naming the tests in an alphabetically ordered manner such that tests appear in the order they 'need' to be executed. However NUnit may choose to change this behavior with a later release and then your tests would be hosed. Better check in the current NUnit binaries to Source Control.
• VS (IMHO encouraging the wrong behavior with their 'agile tools') has something called as "Ordered tests" in their MS testing framework. I didn't waste any time reading up but it seems to be targeted towards the same audience

See Also: characteristics of a good test