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I've been reading and trying to use NUnit, and so far the books/articles I am reading say that in the bin folder of NUnit, there should be nunit.framework.dll, which I need to reference in my project.

But the strange thing is that there is no nunit.framework.dll, but there are two folders: net-1.1 and net-2.0.

I use neither, I am working in VS 2010 with .NET 4.0.

Is NUnit deprecated?

Why would they only have two folders for old versions of .NET?

SteveC
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DerMeister
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    just use the one in 2.0. NUnit is built against 2.0, but it can be used from 4.0 projects just fine. – Mike Two May 24 '11 at 21:46

3 Answers3

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To start off, NUnit is in no way deprecated and has become de facto primary unit testing framework for .NET.

However, as a testing framework, it doesn't involve compiling expressions, doesn't use LINQ or dynamic language constructs, and in its current implementation relies on feature found even in .NET 1.0, such as attributes.

However, with the release of .NET 2.0, a new CLR was shipped. Old .NET 1.1 assemblies had to be “remapped” in the application configuration file in order to be picked up by the new CLR, and people would get issues with running their .NET 2.0 applications with a library compiled for .NET 1.1.

When .NET 3.0 and .NET 3.5 came out, they didn't carry a new CLR along. Both of them still use .NET 2.0 CLR and only add some libraries (WPF, WCF) and language features (such as LINQ) with them. Because these releases don't bring changes to CLR, there is absolutely no sense in distributing separate library versions for them, as the binaries would stay exactly the same, referencing version of mscorlib found in .NET 2.0.

I'm not sure about .NET 4.0 and if it requires entry in App.config to properly load .NET 2.0-compiled NUnit library so I am open to comments on this.

There's a quote from NUnit blog explaining separate 1.1 and 2.0 packaging:

So, if it’s possible to run the original, built-with-net-1.1 version of NUnit under any version of the CLR, why do we need a separate .Net 2.0 version? Strictly speaking, we don’t. But it’s convenient for a few reasons:

  1. Folks seem to have an inordinate amount of trouble getting NUnit to run under the proper framework version. Having a special version will make their lives a bit easier, not to mention mine, since I have to answer all the questions.

  2. Eventually, we will need a separate version. It’s inevitable that people will begin to use 2.0-only features in their tests. Imagine an Assert on a nullable value. Or a generic TestFixture class. We’ll be able to deal with some of those things from an NUnit built with .Net 1.1, but many of them will either require .Net 2.0 or be much simpler to implement with .Net 2.0.

For now, the .Net 2.0 builds are identical in features to the .Net 1.1 builds. We have reflected this in not changing the version numbering for now. Those using one or the other framework version exclusively can download a copy of NUnit built to use that version without missing out on any features. Those using both versions have the choice of installing both versions side by side – just be careful which one you reference – or using the command-line /framework option to select the correct version on the fly.

(highlighting is mine)

However, it was posted a long time ago (November 2006) so probably by now the versions do differ.

Dan Abramov
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  • That's good to hear. I got the book Professional Enterprise .Net and its using nunit, but I didn't get if I could still use it or that I should figure it out with MSTest. I get that the reason is that from version 2.0 the feature set is basically all you need (even now), but it does add some confusion since there are all these new features where we're at right now with the framework and having only a folder called net-2.0 :-) – DerMeister May 24 '11 at 22:04
  • NUnit is very similar in its feature set to MSTest so there's no huge difference unless you use some specific features. MSTest doesn't use any features from .NET 3.0+ too, as far as I know. Take a look at comparison here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/nnaderi/archive/2007/02/01/mstest-vs-nunit-frameworks.aspx, it's mostly class names.. – Dan Abramov May 24 '11 at 22:10
  • Maybe I will also try to implement it with MSTest. I get the idea that nunit is more preferred since it is older and has a bigger... "fan"base. – DerMeister May 24 '11 at 22:21
  • Yeah, exactly. Anyway, switching test framework is a matter of 10 minutes. Choosing mocking framework is much more important (see this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/261139/nunit-vs-mbunit-vs-mstest-vs-xunit-net ) – Dan Abramov May 24 '11 at 22:32
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Goto http://nuget.org/ and install NuGet. Then follow the instructions on how to add a NuGet package to your project. Then search for NUnit and it will automatically import the correct dll for your project.

By the way, with a .NET 4.0, you can use any dll above 2.0 so you can use NUnit .NET 2.0 assembly with your project. It will automatically be loaded and run with CLR v4 along with your own assemblies so no performance penalty there.

Teoman Soygul
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The net-2.0 version was built using .NET 2.0, but it will run successfully under .NET 4.0 (it's got entries in its .exe.config file to enable this). And it will successfully run tests that were built with .NET 4.0.

I agree that it would be less confusing if they provided binaries that were more obviously current, but there's no technical need for them. Use the net-2.0 folder; it should work for you.

Joe White
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  • That is confusing indeed. I understand your argument, but they could be renaming the folder just to whatever version the .NET framework is right now. One more thing: I noticed that nunit.framework.dll is both in net-2.0 but as well in net-2.0/framework. Is there are reason for this or are they just the same versions (I'm actually assuming they are) – DerMeister May 24 '11 at 21:53
  • If they renamed the folder, that would suggest to people using .NET 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5 (which are all built on the base 2.0 framework) that they can't use NUnit *at all.* Usually you can use older code on a newer framework, so what they're doing now is less confusing than renaming the folder to net-4.0. – Joe White May 24 '11 at 21:58
  • I get it. I was just in the mindset of "if it says net-4.0 that will encompass/include all the previous version as well". I was just thinking from a different direction. – DerMeister May 24 '11 at 22:08
  • I wanted to thank you for your answer and pushing me in the right direction. I gave the answer points to gaearon for explaining the why of it as well, but it was a tough decision. Nonetheless, I gave you a "this is useful". Thanks again. – DerMeister May 24 '11 at 22:24