Custom test adapter installed via NuGet isn't discovering tests

Question

I'm trying to install a custom test adapter via NuGet, but it seems like VS isn't recognizing it. I've looked through the code in Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestWindow.VsAdapters.UnitTestExtensionDiscoverer, so I've realized the dll has to end with *.TestAdapter.dll. Using that name makes vstest.console work for me when I specify /TestAdapterPath, so I'm not sure why the VS2013 test window isn't showing my tests.

The adapter does work when installed by copying the relevant files to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TestWindow\Extensions.

Are there any other path or filename conventions I need to follow for VS2013 to load my test adapter? Without any logging or error messages I'm really not sure how to gather more information to debug this.

Answer 1

The issue seems to have been that I was trying to debug by overwriting my dlls in the packages directory. This doesn't work because VS copies your package directory to something like:

%TEMP%\VisualStudioTestExplorerExtensions\My.TestAdapter.1.0.0.23

essentially caching it with the key being the version number. If you copy the file into the project packages directory VS won't copy it because the folder number didn't change. So, to update your extension you have to keep publishing NuGet packages.

At least that's how I understand it.

Edit: I've also noticed that when you upgrade your test adapter through NuGet, it won't start using the new version until you restart VS, or kill vstest.*