In this series:
- Getting started with Jenkins, Git and MSBuild
- Automatically triggering a Jenkins build on Git commit
- Running NUnit tests with Jenkins (this post)
At the time of writing Jenkins is at version 1.602.
Following on from my previous post - Automatically triggering a Jenkins build on Git commit - the next step is to automatically run unit tests as part of the build.
My unit tests are written using NUnit. As with everything in Jenkins getting unit tests to run as part of a build is a fairly manual process which involves adding a new build step to call the NUnit console application directly. Let’s get started.
Step 1 – Install the NUnit binaries
If you haven’t got it already you’ll need to download and install NUnit. You can do so using an MSI or grab the Zip file and extract the binaries to a folder on your machine. Of course you could use Chocolatey to install NUnit.
chocolatey install nunit
Step 2 - Add a build step to your Jenkins build
Now you have NUnit you’ll need to add a new build step to your Jenkins build. Choose your project from the dashboard.
On the configuration page scroll to the bottom and add click ‘Add build step’. Choose ‘Execute Windows batch command’.
This adds the new build step that you will use to call NUnit. That’s simply a case of calling the NUnit console executable passing in the path to the assembly containing the tests to be run.
Remember to call nunit-console.exe or nunit-console-x86.exe if you’re testing a 32-bit assembly. If you need to run tests against multiple assemblies you can do so by listing them on the command line. NUnit command line documents are here.
Once you’ve done all that save the changes and click ‘Build now’.
All things being equal you should have a successful build. If you click on the build in the Build History and look at the Console Output you will be able to see the results of the NUnit run.
The output isn’t very slick though, is it? Lets see about getting a nice unit test report working.
Step 3 – Publish NUnit report
First, make sure the NUnit plugin has been installed in Jenkins. If it’s not there you’ll need to add it. Go to Dashboard > Manage Jenkins > Manage Plugins and check your installed plugins. If it’s not there add it. This plugin makes it possible to import NUnit reports from each build into Jenkins so they are displayed with a trend graph and details about which tests that failed.
Next you need to get NUnit to publish its results as an XML file from your build. To do that add ‘/xml=nunit-result.xml’ to the end of the batch command you added in Step 2.
Now add a post-build action to your build definition and select ‘Publish NUnit test result report’.
Run a build and when it completes click on the build ID in the Build History list for the project. You’ll find a new item, Test Result, in the build history. Click on the Test Result link to see the report.
Job done!