ReSharper 2 is shaping up!

I’ve been using ReSharper with Visual Studio 2003 for probably 15 months or so now, and have found it to be one of the most invaluable tools I use (along with Reflector, CruiseControl.net, NUnit, TestDriven.net, Clover.NET, the list goes on :). But ReSharper just makes the development process nicer.

I can add references and not worry about having to add the using statement myself, ReSharper pops up the red for me automatically. It makes writing code test-first easier, I can write a statement then have ReSharper write the new class/property/method when it recognises it doesn’t already exist. And now, with ReSharper 2 (via. their EAP program) I’ve been using their built-in unit testing runner.

Previous EAP builds have been a little buggy, and the unit test runner has been pretty darn slow, but this seems to have improved with the latest build. At least to the point where I can use it and tolerate the occasional unhandled exception message appear. I just can’t wait for it to be released, which I believe is very soon!

In fact, I find their unit test runner experience to be superior to TDD.net’s, and NUnit GUI’s.

1. It sits in a window giving me a constant green/red bar. With TDD.net it kind of hides away after I run the tests and go back to the code. It’s a good constant reminder of progress. A positive psychological thing.
2. When I then update the code and rebuild, it will colour the tests that existed and ran previously a slightly different colour. Obviously these should all be green, but, its nice to see which tests I’d just run and just added etc.
3. It has a very nice assertion message viewer that is formatted. It’s surprising just how much nicer this is to use. Both NUnit’s GUI and TDD.net just display regular text. It can be difficult to separate messages from the stack trace, and messages can even be hard to read.
4. For `Assert.AreEqual(string, string)` assertions, it’s posssible to get a diff view of the comparison. This would’ve been extremely useful where we’ve previously done stuff in the past to compare generated HTML and templates for mail merges, where its often just an `Environment.NewLine` out, or a space misplaced in a sea of markup.

In fact, it makes me wish that Ruby’s Test::Unit unit test framework had a way of colouring the messages it displayed so my Rails’ `rake test_units` and `test_functional` commands would be easier to see at a glance in the terminal window.

Don’t worry, despite my happiness with a ReSharper + Visual Studio 2005, I still have hankerings to get back to the Ruby on Rails development later tonight and tomorrow! Let the fun begin! I’ve got some great projects lined up, including one or two multiplayer online games! More on those soon!

Oh, and apologies for the lack of regular updates, it won’t happen again. I promise.