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Since NCrunch has left the free market, I was looking for a similar tool for code coverage marking, and continous testing like NCrunch

edit: I'm using VS2012

update:

I've been using ContinuousTest for a while now, it's OK, but I think it lacks feedback when I write code. The feedback is good when I write tests, but when I break a test (while editing source code) it won't tell me that the test broke (in the margin, like it does for NCrunch). So if anyone knows other tools, I'm still listening.

Pacane
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7 Answers7

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NCrunch is a fantastic tool that I discovered while it was still in beta, as a developer I try to do my best to support people that are doing cool projects. If people were using NCrunch and liked it, I'd encourage you to purchase a license.

Stuff like that takes a lot of time to develop and less people will be creating the cool tools you love if people aren't willing to support it.

Nick
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    I sure will purchase a license once I finish school. As a student I can't afford paying 159$. Instead, I can use ContinuousTests for right now. I'd encourage Remco to give/charge less for students, that'll make us get used to it, and encourage people to use it around us. – Pacane Apr 08 '13 at 23:13
  • Agreed, education licensing would be nice, but then there's a whole other verification step to setup. Maybe as the product matures that will be added. – Nick Apr 16 '13 at 16:21
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    I would love to support NCrunch, but $159 is too high even for developers. $99 or lower coull be justifiable for something that is basically a luxury, albeit a very nice one. In the meantime ContinuousTests is filling the gap nicely. – 79E09796 May 21 '13 at 16:24
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    $159 is very reasonable compared to the cost of the rest of the software you're using if you're interested in using NCrunch. Visual Studio, SQL Server, etc.. – Nick Jun 11 '13 at 15:51
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    These days, $159 is likely to be the price of one or two textbooks. I'd wager NCrunch will be a lot more useful than any of your college textbooks. – Ryan Lundy Aug 17 '15 at 17:50
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From what I've read, most people are in the same boat and are moving to ContinuousTests. I do not think there is a perfect replacement... yet.

Here is a decent comparison between NCrunch and ContinuousTests

Update

Upon recent usage of ContinuousTests with VS2012 I have decided to uninstall. There was too much friction to get it running. I believe it needs an update to support VS2012 properly.

Community
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Tony T
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  • What kind of friction, if I may ask? – Pacane Nov 06 '12 at 17:23
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    Initial setup was a roulette of successes and failures within the team, excluding specific projects from the automated tests was not as easy and uninstalling corrupted a visual studio install for one member and leaves artifacts in menus for others. – Tony T Nov 07 '12 at 02:21
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    I tried ContinuousTests in VS2012 and it's working pretty well so far. I don't know if they've updated it, but it definitely works well. – Pacane Jan 23 '13 at 15:33
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    Hopefully it has been updated since we attempted to use it and is better now. Try uninstalling it if you want a real test. It was like a virus and it was easier to have it installed and ignored than resolve all the issues caused by removal. – Tony T Feb 12 '13 at 10:07
  • Is there any way to remove the menu artifacts short of nuking and rebuilding my VS2012 install? – DanB Feb 12 '13 at 11:59
  • Yes, but I do not believe its permanent. You can View > Toolbars > Customize > Commands and remove it from there. Careful if you try to remove the ContinuousTests files from disk and registry, this caused a screen repainting issue for a single team member where the editor did not display any content and was only resolved by re-installing ContinuousTests – Tony T Feb 14 '13 at 22:25
  • @DanB I had a similar issue. I had to go into Tools -> Extensions and Updates and uninstall Mighty Moose for the screen repainting to work again. – Robert Greiner Mar 12 '13 at 16:56
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    The problems with the installer remains since a year ago. The team at least must provide a clean uninstall. – Apocatastasis Jul 23 '13 at 00:07
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    FYI, ContinuousTests is now open source. https://github.com/continuoustests/ContinuousTests/ – Jay Bazuzi Sep 14 '14 at 04:58
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    Unfortunately it has been abandoned – HamsterWithPitchfork Apr 10 '19 at 10:12
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NCrunch is worth every penny. $159 is really not that bad considering the effort put in by Remco to integrate it seamlessly into VS; which is really not easy. That when combined with the metrics it provides make it a simple decision in my opinion.

Qerim Shahini
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Have a look at Giles for continous testing.

It currently supports NUnit, xUnit.net, Machine.Specifications and NSpec, but the roadmap shows that support for all major testing frameworks is planned.

Haugholt
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  • Is it possible to integrate it to Visual Studio? I haven't seen anywhere we could. – Pacane Jan 28 '13 at 14:18
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    @Pacane: It's a very simple tool, but you could add it to visual studio as an external tool (Tools -> External Tools) to start it up.. – Haugholt Jan 29 '13 at 11:26
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    Very nice. I like that it stays out of the way and performs the msbuild under its process after saves. – Reid Evans Jun 14 '13 at 14:41
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NCrunch is an absolutely good product, a bit expensive though. The suggested alternative (ContinuousTest) does not work very well, as it doesn't have line by line coverage, total code coverage metrics and it complains about properly referenced NuGet packages in large solutions (works perfectly fine with NCrunch).

NCrunch also has a seamless integration with Visual Studio which makes coding even faster and more fun, and you know when you met all criteria specified in unit tests while you are coding, without the need to press any button.

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A tool similar to NCrunch would be ContinuousTests but I don't think they do code coverage in the classical sense.

Open Source code coverage tools for .NET such as PartCover and OpenCover also exist.

Shaun Wilde
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  • Here's the direct link to GitHub: https://github.com/continuoustests/ContinuousTests - the above link seems to send you through some dodgy-looking UI asking for confirmation that you're human. #notcool – Brett Rigby Feb 05 '19 at 11:54
  • Now is a malware site. – Rtype Feb 03 '20 at 00:07
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I was an avid NCrunch user. Now that they have went commercial I am using ContinuousTests and TestDriven.net which contains NCover for code coverage.

NpnDan
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