TC-Lite Framework Getting Started
Creating a Test Project

You can create your TC-Lite test project using various tools. On this page, I'll describe the use of Visual Studio Code and the dotnet CLI. Other approaches, including use of Visual Studio, will be added soon.

The example used here continues in some of the following pages as well. It involves calculation of the values of a Fibonacci series. The following names are used:

  • Fibonacci the name of the solution.
  • FibLib the name of the library being tested.
  • FibTests the name of the test project.

Create the Solution

Start by creating a folder called Fibonacci. You can do this in VSCode using the File | Open Folder menu item and clicking on the Create Folder button. Alternatively, create your folder from the command-line using the appropriate command for your operating system. If you use the command-line, you should enter the new folder (cd Fibonacci). If you used VSCode, you're already in that folder.

At the command-line or in the VSCode terminal window enter

dotnet new sln

Note: All the initial steps on this page may be carried out either at the command-line or in the VSCode Terminal panel. This is handy to know in some cases, as when you want to create a script to set up your projects.

Create the Project Under Test

From within the solution folder, enter the following commands:

dotnet new classlib -o FibLib
dotnet sln add FibLib

Create the Test Project

Still in the solution folder, enter the following commands:

dotnet new console -o FibTests
dotnet sln add FibTests

Note A TC-Lite test project must be a console application.

Add a Reference to the Project Under Test

At this point you have a solution with two projects, FibLib and FibTests. FibTests needs to know about FibLib so, still working in the solution folder, enter the following command:

dotnet add FibTests reference FibLib

Add a Reference to TCLite

The test project also needs a reference to TCLite itself. Enter the following command:

dotnet add FibTests package TCLite

The package reference is added to the project and the package is restored from NuGet.org.

Solution Structure

You should now have a folder structure like this:

Fibonacci/
|  +--Fibonacci.sln
|
+--MyLibrary/
|  +--Class1.cs
|  +--FibLib.csproj
|
+--MyTests/
   |--Program.cs
   +--FibTests.csproj

The project files are ready to use unless you want to change the TargetFramework in either of them. In my case, I performed the above steps using .NET 5.0, so both my projects target that framework. Other defaults will be used depending on the latest version of the SDK you have installed.

The source files Class1.cs and Program.cs are sample files that dotnet CLI generated for you. You should delete Class1.cs.

Call the TestRunner

The final step in setting up your project is to make sure the TC-Lite TestRunner is called. Edit Program.cs so that it contains the following code:

using TCLite.Runners;

namespace FibTests
{
    class Program
    {
        static int Main(string[] args)
        {
            return new TCLite.Runners.TestRunner().Execute(args);
        }
    }
}

This code will run when you execute your test assembly. It passes the arguments to TCLite's TestRunner class, which is then able to examine the test assembly, discover tests and execute them.

You can verify that by building and running the test project. Enter

dotnet run -p FibTests

TCLite builds your projects and tries to run your test assembly. It gives an error message indicating that it found no tests, because we haven't created any so far. We'll do that on the next page.

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