Some great news today from Typemock, there is now a free basic edition of Typemock Isolator. The addresses a key historic problem with Isolator, that of its cost when you don’t need the advanced features of Isolator all the time.
Now if you need the cool advanced mocking features of Isolator, such as mocking sealed private classes, then the cost is not really a factor, you buy the product or don’t get the features. However what do you do if you just want to do just do ‘normal mocking’ in a project ? e.g. mock out an interfaces. Do you use Typemock as you already have it, or swap to a different mocking framework, only using Typemock when you have to use its advanced features?
This is a particular problem for consulting/bespoke development companies such as mine, we write code for clients that in the future they will have to maintain themselves, they are not that happy with us passing over code with a dependency on a licensed mocking framework unless it is essential to their project. This means in the past I have tended to use other mocking frameworks, usually FakeItEasy as its syntax is very similar to Typemock Isolator, unless I need its advanced features of Typemock such as in SharePoint projects.
However with this new basic edition release from Typemock this is no longer an issue. I can use Typemock in all my projects. If a client need to run the tests, as long as they are ‘normal mocking’ ones, all they need to do is install this new free version of Typemock and the project builds and the tests run. There is only a need to purchase a license if the advanced features of Typemock are required.
So longer do I need to swap mocking framework for only licensing reasons, hence reducing the friction I have had in the past changing mocking syntax.