Running only part of the set of all tests with MSTest

Question

I'd like to know if there is any simple way of running with MSTests a certain category of tests. I currently have some Unit and Integration tests. Generally, I just want to run Unit-Tests.

I know you can tag each test method with a category, but from what I've seen it seems like it is only useful if you want to create different tests lists. That doesn't seem so useful, as for each new test I'd have to update that list.

I've also tried putting Integration tests in one project and Unit tests in another one, but I can see only 3 options for running tests: Solution and Context-Wide and Impacted tests, so I guess this doesn't help a lot.

How do you guys do it?

Thanks

Answer 1

If you run ("Debug") a whole test project, it will run all the tests in the project. This is useful if you have strict partitions of your tests.

Otherwise, you have to use Test Lists (in the Test menu), which never seems to work well for me. They seem to get overwritten automatically sometimes.

Answer 2

Under what context are you trying to run the tests? During CI? After building on your dev box? Personally I believe using the categories is the best way to go. You don't have to create a list. On the Test List Editor you can sort by category. Just highlight all of the tests with "UnitTest" category (or whatever) check all and run selected.

Additionally, if you have them in different projects then you can group by project and select all those in the unit test project.