Can I force MSTest to use a new process for each test run?

Question

We're using the VS 2010 test runner (MSTest) for automated functional testing. When we run tests from Visual Studio, VS creates a process called QTAgent32.exe, and it runs the tests in that process.

We've found that when we do multiple test runs, MSTest will reuse the same QTAgent32 process - the process ID does not change. This is a problem for us, since the code we're testing is P/Invoking to an unmanaged DLL. The DLL needs to be initialized only once during the lifetime of the process. We have an [AssemblyInitialize] method, but that executes once per test run. If we perform multiple test runs, it will execute more than once in the same process.

Every time we do a test run, MSTest creates a new appdomain; but these appdomains are all in the same process.

So I'm wondering: is there a way to tell the Visual Studio test runner to use a new process every time we run tests? I looked at the ".testsettings" configuration but didn't see anything relevant.

Answer 1

dont know how far you want to go with it, but one solution could be to create your unit test host

http://technet.microsoft.com/fr-fr/query/bb166558

this link shows how to create adapters, also you could then launch a new process for evertest, create a piped communication and tear it down after the test.

I know MS itself uses a different host for running tests under moles

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/pex/molestutorial.pdf