Getting started with Pex in Visual Studio 2008

Posted By: Peli de Halleux | Jan 14th @ 11:38 AM | 54,262 Views | 12 Comments
Nikolai Tillmann and Peli de Halleux give a short tutorial on Pex, an automated white box testing tool for .Net. The tutorial is a pair-programming session where they show us how to get started with Pex in Visual Studio, starting from an (untested) piece of C# code:
  • how to use Pex to explore the behavior of any method in your code,
  • how to save the exploration results into a unit test suite,
  • how to improve the generated parameterized unit tests to leverage Pex code exploration engine.

If you want to follow up the steps on your machine as well,

The Research in Software Engineering team (RiSE) coordinates Microsoft's research in Software Engineering in Redmond, USA.
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#Jan 14th @ 7:32 PM
Code Logix
Code Logix
It's in the code.
This is great, automatic unit test generation and complete code coverage!

Dowload it, and try it... It rocks!
#Jan 14th @ 11:12 PM
Rhapsody
Rhapsody
In Metal We Trust
Awesome! I'm going to try it out as well. Very cool to see that Pex actually uses values inside the function as test values.

Edit: Ok. I've been playing with it for a half an hour and it looks very very very cool!!! 
#Jan 15th @ 7:54 AM
stevo_
stevo_
Human after all
Is this right that you need a team edition of vs to use pex now? I'm using x64 and it just keeps telling me I need the team editions (I use pro), I used the older versions of pex in pro.
#Jan 15th @ 11:13 AM
peli
peli
Peli
The DevLabs installer requires Visual Studio 2008/2010 with TeamDev or Team Test.
The academic download does not require Visual Studio. However, there is currently a bug in that installer which incorrectly checks for VS. We are currently preparing a new drop for the academic download and will update the link shortly.

Sorry for the inconvinience.
#Jan 15th @ 2:06 PM
stevo_
stevo_
Human after all
Ah ha! no worries, I'll check back soon! cheers.
#Jan 16th @ 11:17 AM
peli
peli
Peli
The problem has been fixed and a new academic download is available.
#Jan 16th @ 11:29 AM
stevo_
stevo_
Human after all
sooopar! cheers
#Jan 16th @ 10:14 PM
raghur
raghur
Awesome tool. Just experimented with it and already loving it. Keep up the good work!
#Jan 21st @ 7:36 AM
peli
peli
Peli
If you use Pex (and hate/like it), don't forget to drop us a note in the forums...
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