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Auto-generation of .NET unit tests

Asked 2008-09-26T23:28:20.953
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Is there such a thing as unit test generation? If so...

...does it work well?

...What are the auto generation solutions that are available for .NET?

...are there examples of using a technology like this?

...is this only good for certain types of applications, or could it be used to replace all manually written unit testing?

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I believe there's no point in Unit test generation, as far as TDD goes.

You only make unit tests so that you're sure that you (as a developer) are on track w/ regards to design and specs. Once you start generating tests automatically, it loses that purpose. Sure it would probably mean 100% code coverage, but that coverage would be senseless and empty.

Automated unit tests also mean that your strategy is test-after, which is opposite of TDD's test-before tenet. Again, TDD is not about tests.

That being said I believe MSTest does have an automatic unit-test generation tool -- I was able to use one with VS2005.

answered 2008-09-26T23:32:06.887

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