NUnit vs Visual Studio 2010's MSTest?

Question

I realise that there are many older questions addressing the general question of NUnit v MSTest for versions of Visual Studio up to 2008 (such as this one).

M

Answer 1

MSUnit runs your test cases under conditions that are different from the actual execution environment. Specifically, the deployed files differ from those that are deployed when you run your actual project. Nethertheless, there is the [DeploymentItem]-Attribute to specify which files shall be deployed by MSUnit. So if your application depends on any external files, such as

• database files
• database configuration file
• application configuration file
• ...

then MSUnit is not the right choice, because the MSUnit tests never cover what your file system is going to look like in execution environment. The Visual Studio Project File settings for deploying files (Copy always, Content, etc.) are ignored by the MSUnit runner. So those settings cannot be tested.