How to Profile Unit Tests of MsTest in Visual Studio 2008?

Question

I've got integration tests which I launch from Visual Studio 2008 Development Edition (they are executed as MSTest unit-tests, even though they are actually integration tests). I would like to do some profiling while the tests are being carried out.

In my case, I have an MSTest "ordered" test I'm running. I'd like to collect sampling data while each of the ordered tests is executed.

How do I do this?

ps Perhaps I can accomplish this from the command line, if I manually launch mstest from a command prompt, while trying to follow command line directions . Unfortunately, when I try to launch VsPerfCLREnv from the Visual Studio command prompt, it is "file not found." What the heck?

Answer 1

I just got profiling working in VS2008. In case it helps anyone, here is how I got it to work:

1. Ensure you are in Debug configuration mode
2. Click Analyse > Launch Performance Wizard
3. Select Profile a dynamic link library
4. Enter the following:
   • Dll path: The dll you want to instrument, located in the bin\\Debug of your unit test project
   • Executable path: C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\\Common7\\IDE\\MSTest.exe
   • Start Option Arguments: /testmetadata:TestList.vsmdi /runconfig:TestRunConfig1.testrunconfig
     • Adjust this based on the name of your vsmdi and testrunconfig files.
   • Working directory: Your solution root path
5. Choose Instrumentatation . I haven't tried Sampling, so I cannot comment on that.
6. Run the new performance project

Using this approach I identified the bottleneck in my code, and the unit tests are now 15x faster, and the users are seeing a 10x speed improvement.

Answer 2

Unfortunately Ordered Tests don't have the 'Create Performance Session' option available:

If you had a simple unit test you would be able to create a performance session.

To use command-line profiling you can navigate to \\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\\Team Tools\\Performance Tools where you will see vsperfclrenv.cmd and other tools mentioned on the profiler blog.