Challenges with TypeMock and Team Build

According to the TypeMock documentation it's a breeze to set up mocking during Team Build. Well I have just spent a week trying to get it to work and I think I finally cracked it. It all comes down to reading the f*** manual and believing it to be taken literally.

 

TypeMock location

The TypeMock manual say the following:

<!-- Use Typemock Isolator MsBuild Extensions -->
<Import Project="C:\Program Files\TypeMock\Typemock Isolator\TypeMock.MSBuild.tasks" />

<!-- Override this target to plugin custom tasks before running tests -->
<Target Name="BeforeTest">
  <!-- Start TypeMock -->
  <TypeMockStart/>
</Target>

<!-- Override this target to plugin custom tasks after running tests -->
<Target Name="AfterTest">
  <!-- Quit TypeMock -->
  <TypeMockStop/>
</Target>

Well first of all this isn't quite true. As of 5.1 (I think) TypeMock installs into another directory (C:\Program Files\Typemock\Isolator\5.2 in my case as we just upgraded to 5.2.1).  So you have to perform some trickery in your MSBuild files to detect whether your doing a build server or desktop build. Luckily there are ways to do this.

Anyway, this is not my main point. The main point is that you can get tricked by the way MSBuild is implemented and used during an EndToEndIteration build.

Where does the TypeMockRunner instance live?

What I saw was that my tests were running fine during DesktopBuild but failing miserably during E2EI (yes I ran a desktop build (msbuild TFSBuild.proj /t:test) on the build server and the tests ran fine). So that’s what I've been spending the last week trying to unravel. And here are the results from the Norwegian jury:

You must follow the instructions (above) from the TypeMock doc to the extent that you call TypeMockStart/TypeMockStop from TFSBuild.proj itself.


We have an existing build system (CruiseControl) so I was reusing my Test.proj calling the necessary targets from inside that. THIS WILL NOT WORK IN A TEAM BUILD CONTEXT! You have to call TypeMockStart from the same instance of MSBuild as the one you're running tests from (i.e. calling MSTest/TestToolsTask)!


Consequence: The multiple agents switch (/m) of MSTest is incompatible with TypeMock.


I had to disable building in parallel because of this. It has to be said that the guys at TypeMock are waiting for me to have some available time so we can look into this since this is obviously no more good for them than it is for me. Ay ve! So much to deal with and so little time.