Testing with C# Dev Kit

Testing in C# in Visual Studio Code is enabled by the C# Dev Kit extension. It's a lightweight extension to enhance your C# development experience.

Overview

The extension supports the following test frameworks:

The C# Dev Kit extension provides the following features:

Requirements

Project setup

Note: If you have already set up your C# test framework in your project, you can skip to the Features section.

Enable testing and adding test framework packages to your project

You can enable a test framework for your project with just a few steps in the Solution Explorer:

xUnit

Open the Command Palette and select .NET:New Project.. then select xUnit Test Project and provide name and location for the new project. This will create a new project and directory that uses xUnit as the test library and configures the test runner by adding the following <PackageReference /> elements to the project file.

From the Terminal, run the following command:

dotnet add [location of your test csproj file] reference [location of the csproj file for project to be tested]
NUnit
Open the Command Palette and select .NET:New Project.. then select NUnit3 Test Project and provide name and location for the new project. This will create a new project and directory that uses NUnit as the test library and configures the test runner by adding the following <PackageReference /> elements to the project file.
Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk
nunit
NUnit3TestAdapter
From the Terminal, run the following command:
dotnet add [location of your test csproj file] reference [location of the csproj file for project to be tested]
MSTest
Open the Command Palette and select .NET:New Project.. then select MSTest Test Project and provide name and location for the new project. This will create a new project and directory that uses MSTest as the test library and configures the test runner by adding the following <PackageReference /> elements to the project file.
Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk
MSTest.TestAdapter
MSTest.TestFramework
coverlet.collector
From the Terminal, run the following command:
dotnet add [location of your test csproj file] reference [location of the csproj file for project to be tested]
Features
Run/Debug test cases
C# Dev Kit will generate shortcuts (the green play button) on the left side of the class and method definition. To run the target test cases, select the green play button. You can also right-click on it to see more options.
Test Explorer
The Test Explorer is a tree view to show all the test cases in your workspace. You can select the beaker button on the left-side Activity bar of Visual Studio Code to open it. You can also run/debug your test cases and view their test results from there.
View test results
After running/debugging the test cases the state of the related test items will be updated in both editor decorations and the Test Explorer.
You can select the links in the stack trace to navigate to the source location.
VS Code testing commands
There are testing commands (for example, Run All Tests) that can be found by searching for Test: in the Command Palette (⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P)).
VS Code testing settings
There are VS Code settings specific to testing that can be found by searching for Testing in the Settings editor (⌘, (Windows, Linux Ctrl+,)).