How to use PEX in Visual Studio 2012

Question

VS 2010 powertools installation helped to use PEX & Moles in VS 2010. Now with VS 2012, I understand that Moles becomes enriched as Fakes but hopefully PEX is retained, please confirm. Also, how to use PEX in 2012. What needs to be installed (like VS 2010 powertool) to get that working for 2012. Thanks !!

Haworth

There is a announcement @ research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/pex. "The Pex and Moles team will release an update of Pex for Visual Studio 11 when the final release becomes available. Moles will not developed further so we recommend to migrate to Fakes." – Rundlet

Answer 1

As far as I know, they are waiting for a final version of Visual Studio 2012 to release a version of Pex compatible with it. I can't understand why Microsoft doesn't make this things clear... :/

Fluorescence

Now that 2012 RTM is released, any news on PEX for 2012? – Cossack

Also looking for an update now that 2012 RTM has been released! – Diminish

wow still no news. I think its time to give up on the project. Shame as it was potentially awesome. – Confraternity

The first update for Visual Studio 2012 is out today and still no news about new PEX build. I'm starting to worry. – Barta

I've tried to contact Microsoft, but I got no answer. So I decided to email Mary Jo Foley and here is what she got: > Here’s your answer from a MS spokesperson on Visual Studio: > > “_We expect to have an update of Pex compatible with Visual Studio 2012/.NET 4.5 sometime in early 2013. An academic license would be first, a commercial license would come later._” – Fluorescence

Answer 2

Below are the comments from http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/fb5badda-4ea3-4314-a723-a1975cbdabb4

Pex for Visual Studio 2012 2 Posts | Last Post April 23, 2013

Written April 23, 2013 Flynn Hi, I am wondering: There is PEX for Visual Studio 2010, there is Code Digger for Visual Studio 2012 and portable libraries but there is nothing for Visual Studio 2012 and all the the other library formats. Why is that?

Written April 23, 2013 Nikolai Tillmann Code Digger (for Portable Class Libraries) is the first Visual Studio extension from the Pex Team for Visual Studio 2012. Stay tuned for future extensions that bring more aspects of the rich experience of the Pex Visual Studio 2010 Power Tools to the latest version of Visual Studio. If you are looking for a particular Pex feature for Visual Studio 2012, drop as an email at [email protected].*

Concrete

Answer 3

Looks like they introduced Code Digger. From the PEX webpage:

Code Digger for Visual Studio 2012 is a lightweight version of Pex that allows you to explore public .NET methods in Portable Class Libraries directly from the code editor.

Utas

It is so "lightweight" that is almost useless. – Arboreal

Answer 4

As far as I have read from Microsofts documentation PEX for Visual Studio 2012 is now an integral part called "Fakes and Moles", please look here:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/pex/

And here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh549175.aspx

Muskrat

Fakes is a replacement of Moles. Neither have the features of PEX. – Diminish

Answer 5

You can continue to use PEX for test generation by opening your solution(s) in VS 2010 , even if  you are normally working inside VS 2012. VS project schema is very compatible between VS 2010 and VS 2012.

You also could consider to run command line PEX from 2010 add-in. See the answer in Create NUnit test cases automatically from Pex. read more about this in Exercise 5 of Parameterized Unit Testing with Microsoft Pex

Arboreal

Not always: VS 2010 gives me this error message when trying to open VS2012 files: "The selected file is a solution file, but was created by a newer version of this application and cannot be opened." – Nonet

Answer 6

According to This Webcast

Code Digger was released so that people can see the power of PEX when used properly before they release the Visual Studio 2012 version where people pick it apart for not working with platform specific cases.

They don't speak of a release date but since Visual Studio 2013 is now RTM you'd think that it would be soon. I definitely miss PEX as it helped with Parameterized Unit Testing.

Mapel