Visual Studio 2013 MSTest vs NUnit
My company is upgrading our Visual Studio 2012 to 2013 Premium. In the midst of this, we are also looking to start automating our tests using Visual Studio Team Services
I have read a couple of MSTest vs nUnit posts and articles in the past but most of it compares the older version of MSTest. Also, nUnit had a lot of favourable reviews as compared to MSTest.
My question is, considering Microsoft's commitment towards the ALM, Agile practices and all the new stuff they've added into VS2013 Premium and Visual Studio Team Services to facilitate and encourage automated testing, how does MSTest compare to nUnit?
What other considerations should I take before making a decision on a testing framework to use?
Answer
MSTest hasn't changed much since it was originally introduced, so those old comparison posts are still valid. Microsoft's focus on ALM is mostly targeted at further tooling and server products, but the fundamental testing framework hasn't changed much.
It's also worth noticing that MSTest and their entire ALM strategy is targeted at many different styles of automated testing, including Integration Testing, System Testing, Performance Testing, etc., so while it attempts to be a one-size-fits-all, it's quite ill-suited for unit testing, because it's too heavy to work with.
While NUnit is better, I wouldn't recommend it either. It, too, hasn't changed much for years, and the extensibility model is frankly a mess.
Instead, I'd recommend xUnit.net. Although it's not perfect either, it's currently the best mainstream alternative on .NET. There are many reasons why xUnit.net is better than MSTest.