Unit Testing Frameworks - What are the key features

Question

I've read a lot about the available .NET unit testing frameworks. What is not clear to me is what are the key features that differentiate the available frameworks. What are the must-have features that you look for when evaluating unit testing frameworks?

Answer 1

Here are some things I look for

• Speed. Frameworks (and test runners) are not all created equal. If your unit tests lag, your productive time is wasted.
• Asserts. These need to be plentiful to provide for many scenarios. Do you like exceptions caught using an attribute or an Assert.Throws, for example? Are the asserts capable of doing numeric comparisons with a specified tolerance?
• Miscellanea. Useful things that certain frameworks have such as e.g. row tests or being able to read in test data in XML format.