Getting Started

Welcome newcomers to MbUnit. We hope you’ll enjoy it.

The current version of MbUnit is v2.4 which you can download from the main MbUnit site or MbUnit on Google Code. The main code base is written as a .NET 1.1 library which means that you can use MbUnit with all .NET projects except those written in .NET 1.0. For .NET 1.0 projects, you'll need to use MbUnit 2.3 which you can also download from either of the above sites.

Note that from the Gallio release of MbUnit and beyond, MbUnit will support .NET 2.0 and higher projects only.

MbUnit 101

Test-driven development in a five-step nutshell is as follows:

  1. Decide what you want to code
  2. Write some tests which your code must pass
  3. Check the test fails initially by running it without writing the code
  4. Write the smallest amount of code possible for the test to pass. Refactor your code as required.
  5. Repeat steps 2 to 4 until the code you have written does everything you want it to do

Now obviously there’s quite a lot more to it than that and indeed whole books have been written on the subject but this is what it boils down to and for that you need two things: something to write your code and tests with, for example Visual Studio, and a framework to run those tests in: for example MbUnit. (For those curious, MbUnit generates the tests you've written at runtime using Reflection and custom attributes)

Using MbUnit

To start using MbUnit on your machine, simply run the executable installer. Once you've installed MbUnit, you may be surprised to find nothing has been added to your start menu. Don’t panic. You’re using a version of MbUnit prior to v2.4.1. You can either download the latest version of MbUnit, install that and access it through the Start Menu or access it all in its install directory.

There are several ways to use MbUnit to run your tests and the most popular is from within Visual Studio using TestDriven.NET, an add-in for VS, written by one of MbUnit’s original contributors, Jamie Cansdale.

We do however provide our own applications to run MbUnit tests, both of which can be found in your MbUnit installation directory - c:\program files\mbunit by default.

If you’ve never written a test before, have a look at our beginners guide to writing one with MbUnit here. And if you’re still stuck, you can contact us directly for help.