The VSMDI file is created by Visual Studio when you create a test project for the first time. It contains a list of all tests that Visual Studio can find in your solution assemblies and allows you to divide your tests into so-called **test lists**. These test lists can be used to categorize your tests and let you select a subset of tests for execution.

You can use this mechanism for running sub-selections. However, you can also (freely) assign multiple test categories to a test, which enables you to achieve the same, in a more flexible way. And with the *known issues* with VSMDI files, like uncontrolled duplication of these files and obsolete tests being listed with a warning icon, it might seem the better way to do things like this.

My overall suggestion is: check-in your default generated .vsmdi file. This will prevent Visual Studio from (re-)generating such files on your own and your team members systems when new test projects are added. Decide on usage of test lists or assigning categories to tests directly based on your usage experience. Test lists are easy to start with, but less suitable is you want to have flexibility for a large set of tests.

It&#39;s used for Testing in Visual Studio. If you don&#39;t do testing in Visual Studio, I wouldn&#39;t worry about it. But if you do, and you have hundreds of tests it might be worth keeping.

I&#39;m new to web programming and doing different tutorials that I can find on the net.

I did my research and found out that in int(11), 11 is the maximum display width for integers and it&#39;s the default value if unless the integer is UNSIGNED (in this case it&#39;s 10).

When I see something like this:

    id INT(11) not null AUTO_INCREMENT

I have no questions. But why do I see different things in different tutorials? For examlpe, in some, it says, 

    id INT(10) not null AUTO_INCREMENT

And even

    id INT(4) not null AUTO_INCREMENT

What are the authors of those tuts trying to achieve? None of them seem to bother to give an explanation what 10 or 4 means. 

Alright, they&#39;re obviously reducing the display width, but why? What&#39;s wrong with the default width of 11? Why would they want to change it? Or are there any other reasons I don&#39;t know of?

Thanks.

int(11) vs. int(anything else)

I am trying to learn the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) but it is being quite difficult as I am having a huge difficult to figure out when and what I should remove from one class and where I should put/organize it.

I was googling around for some materials and code examples, but most materials I found, instead of making it easier to understand, made it hard to understand.

&gt; For example if I have a list of Users and from that List I have a
&gt; class Called Control that does lots of things like Send a greeting and
&gt; goodbye message when a user comes in/out, verify weather the user
&gt; should be able to enter or not and kick him, receive user commands and messages, etc.

From the example you don&#39;t need much to understand I am already doing too much into one class but yet I am not clear enough on how to split and reorganize it afterwards.

If I understand the SRP, I would have a class for joining the channel, for the greeting and goodbye, a class for user verification, a class for reading the commands, right ?

But where and how would I use the kick for example ?

I have the verification class so I am sure I would have all sort of user verification in there including weather or not a user should be kicked.

So the kick function would be inside the channel join class and be called if the verification fails ?

For example:

    public void UserJoin(User user)
    {
        if (verify.CanJoin(user))
        {
            messages.Greeting(user);
        }
        else
        {
            this.kick(user);
        }
    }

Would appreciate if you guys could lend me a hand here with easy to understand C# materials that are online and free or by showing me how I would be splitting the quoted example and if possible some sample codes, advice, etc.

Learning Single Responsibility Principle with C#

What&#39;s the purose of .vsmdi file? Do I need to check into the source control system?

what&#39;s the purpose of *.vsmdi? Do I need to source control it?

<p>What's the purose of .vsmdi file? Do I need to check into the source control system?</p>


I&#39;m trying to *[printf debug][1]* my Visual Studio project file by spewing messages to the console like this:

    &lt;Target Name=&quot;BeforeBuild&quot;&gt;
      &lt;Message Text=&quot;+++++++++++++++++++++++ Justin Dearing ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++&quot; /&gt;
    &lt;/Target&gt;

This works from the command line:

    BeforeBuild:
      +++++++++++++++++++++++ Justin Dearing ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

However, the messages don&#39;t show up in the Visual Studio 2010 build output. Is there an alternative MSBuild task I can use, or a setting in Visual Studio I can enable to make these messages appear?

  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debugging#Techniques


How do I get the &lt;Message&gt; MSBuild task to show up in the Visual Studio project output?

In VS2010 there is an option to generate debug info for exes/dlls under _linker_ but no such option under _librarian_ for libs. Is the debug info embedded in the static library?

There is an option in the _C/C++_ properties for _Program Database File Name_ for libs, exes, and dlls. By default it goes into my intermediate directory and is named the project name for libs, but is named _vc$(PlatformToolsetVersion).pdb_ for exes/dlls. What&#39;s the pdb from this option and how does it differ from the pdb in the linker option?

If I am supplying a library with libs and headers how do I supply debug symbols to a user of my library?

Static library debug symbols

When I use `strdup` in Microsoft Visual C++, it warns me:

&gt; warning C4996: &#39;strdup&#39;: The POSIX name for this item is deprecated. Instead, use the ISO C++ conformant name: _strdup. See online help for details.

Thus it seems `_strdup` is correct.

But when I use `_strdup` in GCC (Fedora Linux OS), the compiler shows an error:

&gt; error: ‘_strdup’ was not declared in this scope

With GCC and Linux, compiler does not show any error for `strdup`.

Which is correct - `strdup` or `_strdup`?

Note: I include `&lt;string.h&gt;` in my code.

strdup or _strdup?

I&#39;m evaluating Visual Studio Add-ins for Mercurial.  Currently, I&#39;ve identified 3 potential candidates :

 - VisualHg http://visualhg.codeplex.com
 - Mercurial Toolbar : http://mercurialtoolbar.codeplex.com
 - HgSccPackage : http://www.newsupaplex.pp.ru/hgscc_news_eng.html

I&#39;m looking for a comparison of features or capabilities.

Features that are important to me are: a tool that integrate well with VS, Open Source, actively developed, and robust.



What are the differences in the VisualStudio Add-ins for Mercurial?

Visual Studio (and possibly TFS) has somehow (I think perhaps during a source control merge) become confused about the path of a project within my solution.

It thinks it is here (example paths for simplicity):

    C:\My Projects\ExampleSolution\ExampleProjectWrong\ExampleProjectCorrect.csproj

whereas actually, the project file is located here:

    C:\My Projects\ExampleSolution\ExampleProjectCorrect\ExampleProjectCorrect.csproj

I cannot for the life of me get it to recognize the correct location. I have tried:

 - Removing and re-adding the project from the correct location. An error message comes up saying `The project file at C:\My Projects\ExampleSolution\ExampleProjectWrong\ExampleProjectCorrect.csproj could not be found`.

 - Manually editing the .sln file to ensure all references to `ExampleProjectCorrect.csproj` have the correct paths.

 - Doing a find in files on the solution directory for both the correct and incorrect paths, to try and track down where studio is hiding the incorrect path.

 - Deleting the cache directories for VS and TFS

I&#39;m tearing my hair out because I can&#39;t recreate the solution as it has near as makes no difference 100 projects in and is tied in to source control with several other developers working on it.

Can anyone point me in the right direction as to where it is storing this incorrect path and/or how to reset it so the damn thing will load correctly?

Visual Studio retrieving an incorrect path to a project from somewhere

First up, where my knowledge is at:
-

*Unit Tests* are those which test a small piece of code (single methods, mostly). 

*Integration Tests* are those which test the interaction between multiple areas of code (which hopefully already have their own Unit Tests). Sometimes, parts of the code under test requires other code to act in a particular way. This is where Mocks &amp; Stubs come in. So, we mock/stub out a part of the code to perform very specifically. This allows our Integration Test to run predictably without side effects.

All tests should be able to be run stand-alone without data sharing. If data sharing is necessary, this is a sign the system isn&#39;t decoupled enough.

Next up, the situation I am facing:
-

When interacting with an external API (specifically, a RESTful API that will modify live data with a POST request), I understand we can (should?) mock out the interaction with that API (more eloquently stated in [this answer][1]) for an Integration Test. I also understand we can Unit Test the individual components of interacting with that API (constructing the request, parsing the result, throwing errors, etc). What I don&#39;t get is how to actually go about this.

So, finally: My question(s).
-

How do I test my interaction with an external API that has side effects?

A perfect example is [Google&#39;s Content API for shopping][2]. To be able to perform the task at hand, it requires a decent amount of prep work, then performing the actual request, then analysing the return value. Some of this is [without any &#39;sandbox&#39; environment][3].

The code to do this generally has quite a few layers of abstraction, something like:

&lt;!-- language: lang-php --&gt;

    &lt;?php
    class Request
    {
        public function setUrl(..){ /* ... */ }
        public function setData(..){ /* ... */ }
        public function setHeaders(..){ /* ... */ }
        public function execute(..){
            // Do some CURL request or some-such
        }   
        public function wasSuccessful(){
            // some test to see if the CURL request was successful
        }   
    }
    
    class GoogleAPIRequest
    {
        private $request;
        abstract protected function getUrl();
        abstract protected function getData();
    
        public function __construct() {
            $this-&gt;request = new Request();
            $this-&gt;request-&gt;setUrl($this-&gt;getUrl());
            $this-&gt;request-&gt;setData($this-&gt;getData());
            $this-&gt;request-&gt;setHeaders($this-&gt;getHeaders());
        }   
    
        public function doRequest() {
            $this-&gt;request-&gt;execute();
        }   
        public function wasSuccessful() {
            return ($this-&gt;request-&gt;wasSuccessful() &amp;&amp; $this-&gt;parseResult());
        }   
        private function parseResult() {
            // return false when result can&#39;t be parsed
        }   
    
        protected function getHeaders() {
            // return some GoogleAPI specific headers
        }   
    }
    
    class CreateSubAccountRequest extends GoogleAPIRequest
    {
        private $dataObject;
            
        public function __construct($dataObject) {
            parent::__construct();
            $this-&gt;dataObject = $dataObject;
        }   
        protected function getUrl() {
            return &quot;http://...&quot;;
        }
        protected function getData() {
            return $this-&gt;dataObject-&gt;getSomeValue();
        }
    }
    
    class aTest
    {
        public function testTheRequest() {
            $dataObject = getSomeDataObject(..);
            $request = new CreateSubAccountRequest($dataObject);
            $request-&gt;doRequest();
            $this-&gt;assertTrue($request-&gt;wasSuccessful());
        }
    }
    ?&gt;

*Note: This is a PHP5 / PHPUnit example*

Given that `testTheRequest` is the method called by the test suite, the example will execute a live request.

Now, this live request will (hopefully, provided everything went well) do a POST request that has the side effect of altering live data.

Is this acceptable? What alternatives do I have? I can&#39;t see a way to mock out the Request object for the test. And even if I did, it would mean setting up results / entry points for every possible code path that Google&#39;s API accepts (which in this case would have to be found by trial and error), but would allow me the use of fixtures.

A further extension is when certain requests rely on certain data being Live already. Using the Google Content API as an example again, to add a Data Feed to a Sub Account, the Sub Account must already exist.

One approach I can think of is the following steps;

 1. In `testCreateAccount`
  1. Create a sub-account
  1. Assert the sub-account was created
  1. Delete the sub-account
 1. Have `testCreateDataFeed` depend on `testCreateAccount` not having any errors
  1. In `testCreateDataFeed`, create a new account
  1. Create the data feed
  1. Assert the data feed was created
  1. Delete the data feed
  1. Delete the sub-account

This then raises the further question; how do I test the deletion of accounts / data feeds? `testCreateDataFeed` feels dirty to me - What if creating the data feed fails? The test fails, therefore the sub-account is never deleted... I can&#39;t test deletion without creation, so do I write another test (`testDeleteAccount`) that relies on `testCreateAccount` before creating then deleting an account of its own (since data shouldn&#39;t be shared between tests).

In Summary
-

 - How do I test interacting with an external API that effects live data?
 - How can I mock / stub objects in an Integration test when they&#39;re hidden behind layers of abstraction?
 - What do I do when a test fails and the live data is left in an inconsistent state?
 - How *in code* do I actually go about doing all this?

----
Related:

 - [How can mocking external services improve unit tests?][4]
 - [Writing unit tests for a REST-ful API][5]


  [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/559092/how-can-mocking-external-services-improve-unit-tests/559177#559177
  [2]: http://code.google.com/apis/shopping/content/getting-started/usingapi-products.html
  [3]: https://groups.google.com/group/google-content-api-for-shopping/browse_thread/thread/ad6d1f482a7cae4d#msg_d4ab56ab47877fba
  [4]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/559092/how-can-mocking-external-services-improve-unit-tests/559177
  [5]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7380903/writing-unit-tests-for-a-rest-ful-api

How are integration tests written for interacting with external API?

I have thousands of unit tests in my project, and I&#39;d like to choose one or a couple of them to run from the command line. What&#39;s the command to do that?

Using Maven, how do I run specific tests?

I&#39;m looking at Selenium Server at the moment, and I don&#39;t seem to notice a driver that supports headless browser testing.

Unless I&#39;m mistaken, it doesn&#39;t support it.  If you&#39;re on X, you can create a virtual framebuffer to hide the browser window, but that&#39;s not really a headless browser.

Can anyone enlighten me?  Does Selenium support headless browser testing?

Does Selenium support headless browser testing?

I have some Junit unit tests that require a large amount of heap-space to run - i.e. 1G. (They test memory-intensive functionality for a webstart app that will only run with sufficient heap-space, and will be run internally on Win 7 64-bit machines - so redesigning the tests isn&#39;t a practical suggestion.)

I am developing in Intellij IDEA, so I know I can set the JVM parameters (e.g. -Xmx1024M) for the test class. However, this is only for running the whole test class - if I want to run an individual test, I have to recreate the run congfigurations for that test method. 

Also, those are IDE and box specific - so if I switch boxes (I develop on multiple machines) or one of my colleagues tries to run the tests, those settings are not transferred. (Also, other IDEs like Eclipse and NetBeans are used by my colleagues.) FWIW, we&#39;re using mercurial for source code control.

For the build cycle, we&#39;re using Maven, so I know how to specify the JVM parameters for that.

So:
- I&#39;m looking for a way of specifying the JVM parameters that will apply for the whole test class and the individual test methods; and
- I&#39;d like to share those specification across IDEs on any machine (having picked up the code from the repository).

How to set JVM parameters for Junit Unit Tests?

In setUp() method of unittest I&#39;ve setup some _self_ variables, which are later referenced in actual tests. I&#39;ve also created a decorator to do some logging. Is there a way in which I can access those _self_ variables from decorator?

For the sake of simplicity, I&#39;m posting this code:

    def decorator(func):
        def _decorator(*args, **kwargs):
            # access a from TestSample
            func(*args, **kwargs)
        return _decorator

    class TestSample(unittest.TestCase):    
        def setUp(self):
            self.a = 10

        def tearDown(self):
            # tear down code

        @decorator
        def test_a(self):
            # testing code goes here

What would be the best way of accessing _a_ (set in setUp()) from decorator?

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	user705414	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Visual Studio	kroonwijk	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Visual Studio	Joey	View Answer on Stackoverflow

what's the purpose of *.vsmdi? Do I need to source control it?

Visual Studio Problem Overview

Visual Studio Solutions

Solution 1 - Visual Studio

Solution 2 - Visual Studio

Learning Single Responsibility Principle with C#

int(11) vs. int(anything else)

Attributions