How to profile unit tests in Visual Studio 2012?

Question

Is it possible to profile MSTest unit tests in Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate without using any external profiling tools?

Answer 1

This feature was added back in the upcoming Visual Studio 2012 Quarterly Update 1. Right-click the test you want to profile in the Test Explorer and select "Profile Test" from the context menu.

Answer 2

In Visual Studio it was a really powerful feature ! As you, I can not find it in VS2012 (no references in MSDN or in blogs, ...)

Now, the only solution I have found for profiling Unit Test is to Attach the Profiler to a Process called vstest.executionengine.x86.exe (x86 for me but this could be different for 64 bits)

You can do this in the Tab "Performance Explorer" after a right click.

Once the profiler is starting, you can run as many tests as you want. Then stop profiling and you will see all details of this session.

There are 2 caveats with this technique :

• for some reasons, the process is missing in the list. Maybe it stops when idle. Start just one test te see it.
• You have to Attach the Profiler for every sessions. I don't find yet a way to script it.

Hope this will help you.