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BUILDING.md

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Building NUnit 3.0

NUnit 3.0 consists of three separate layers: the Framework, the Engine and the Console Runner. The source code is kept in a single GitHub repository at http://github.com/nunit/nunit.git.

Note that assemblies in one layer must not reference those in any other layer, except as follows:

  • The console runner references the nunit.engine.api assembly, but not the nunit.engine assembly.
  • Tests in any layer reference nunit.framework. Developers should make sure not to introduce any other references.

There are two ways to build NUnit: using the solution file in an IDE or through the build script.

Solution Build

All three layers are built together using a single Visual Studio solution (nunit.sln on Windows and nunit.linux.sln on Linux), which may be built with Visual Studio 2012+, SharpDevelop. or MonoDevelop.

There is a separate VS2008 solution for building the framework to run under the .NET compact framework 3.5.

The solutions all place their output in a common bin directory. Console runner and engine components are placed directly in the bin directory while framework components end up in subdirectories net-2.0, net4.0, sl-5.0, portable and netcf-3.5. Future platform builds will cause new subdirectories to be created.

Build Script

We use Cake (http://cakebuild.net) to build NUnit for distribution. The primary script that controls building, running tests and packaging is build.cake. We modify build.cake when we need to add new targets or change the way the build is done. Normally build.cake is not invoked directly but through build.ps1 (on Windows) or build.sh (on Linux). These two scripts are provided by the Cake project and ensure that Cake is properly installed before trying to run the cake script. This helps the build to work on CI servers using newly created agents to run the build and we generally run it the same way on our own machines.

The build shell script and build.cmd script are provided as an easy way to run the above commands. In addition to passing their arguments through to build.cake, they can supply added arguments through the CAKE_ARGS environment variable. The rest of this document will assume use of these commands.

There is one case in which use of the CAKE_ARGS environment variable will be essential, if not necessary. If you are running builds on a 32-bit Windows system, you must always supply the -Experimental argument to the build. Use set CAKE_ARGS=-Experimental to ensure this is always done and avoid having to type it out each time.

Key arguments to build.cmd / build:

  • -Target, -t The task to run - see below.
  • -Configuration, -c [Release|Debug] The configuration to use (default is Release)
  • -Experimental, -e Use the experimental build of Roslyn

The build.cake script contains a large number of interdependent tasks. The most important top-level tasks to use are listed here:

 * Build               Builds everything. This is the default if no target is given.
 * Rebuild             Cleans the output directory and builds everything
 * Test                Runs all tests. Dependent on Build.
 * TestAllFrameworks   Runs all framework tests. Dependent on Build.
 * Test45              Tests the 4.5 framework without building first.
 * Test40              Tests the 4.0 framework without building first.
 * Test20              Tests the 2.0 framework without building first.
 * TestPortable        Tests the portable framework without building first.
 * TestSL              Tests the Silverlight framework without building first.
 * TestCF              Tests the compact framework without building first.
 * TestEngine          Runs all engine tests. Dependent on Build.
 * TestConsole         Runs the console tests. Dependent on Build.
 * Package             Creates all packages without building first. See Note below.

Notes:

  1. By design, the Package target does not depend on Build. This is to allow re-packaging when necessary without changing the binaries themselves. Of course, this means that you have to be very careful that the build is up to date before packaging.

  2. If the compact framework or Silverlight SDK are not installed on a machine, the relevant building and testing tasks are skipped and a warning is issued.

  3. For additional targets, refer to the build.cake script itself.