MSTest cannot find the assembly

Question

I was using MSTest

and i use command mstest /testsettings:local.Testsetting /testcontainer:folder\\obj\\Debug\\test.dll

and this is the output,

Answer 1

Ok. The DeploymentItem is a way to fix this. However, DeploymentItem is a little fragile.

Here is how I fixed it.

The "current directory" has to line up with the DeploymentItem. The best compromise I found would be to set the current directory to where the .sln file is.

Here is my folder structure.

C:\SomeRootFolder\
C:\SomeRootFolder\MySolution.sln
C:\SomeRootFolder\packages\
C:\SomeRootFolder\packages\MyNugetPackage.1.2.3.4\lib\net45\SomeThirdPartyDll.dll
C:\SomeRootFolder\MyTestProject\MyTestProject.csproj
C:\SomeRootFolder\MyTestProject\MyTestClass.cs

MyTestClass.cs

[TestClass]
public class MyTestClass
{
    [TestMethod]
    /* The DeploymentItem item below is for error ::: Warning: Test Run deployment issue: The assembly or module 'SomeDll' directly or indirectly referenced by the test container 'C:\SomeRootFolder\MyTestProject\bin\debug\MyTestProject.dll' was not found. */
    /* There must be a CD (to the .sln folder) command... before the MsTest.exe command is executed */
    [DeploymentItem(@".\packages\MyNugetPackage.1.2.3.4\lib\net45\SomeDll.dll")]
    public void MyTest()
    {
    }
}

The "trick" is to do a CD (change directory) to the folder that houses the .sln.

REM Now the normal restore,build lines
nuget.exe restore "C:\SomeRootFolder\MySolution.sln"
REM the above nuget restore would create "C:\SomeRootFolder\packages\MyNugetPackage.1.2.3.4\lib\net45\SomeThirdPartyDll.dll"
MSBuild.exe "C:\SomeRootFolder\MySolution.sln" /p:Configuration=Debug;FavoriteFood=Popeyes /l:FileLogger,Microsoft.Build.Engine;logfile=MySolution.Debug.Build.log
REM (the below line is the trick to line up the 'current folder' with the relative path of the DeploymentItem)
cd "C:\SomeRootFolder\"
REM now the below will work without the annoying message, note that C:\SomeRootFolder\MyTestProject\bin\Debug\SomeThirdPartyDll.dll exists
MsTest.exe /testcontainer:"C:\SomeRootFolder\MyTestProject\bin\Debug\MyTestProject.dll" /resultsfile:MyTestProject.Dll.Results.trx

Now because the "current directory" (the result of the CD) is at "C:\SomeRootFolder\", the DeploymentItem relative path works correctly.

Jimminy Crickets.......that is a little nutsy.

Note, the Paul Taylor answer here

Running MsTest from the command line with a custom assembly base directory

did not work for me.