In my last post I discussed the process I needed to go through to get Typemock Isolator running under TFS 2012. In this process I used the Auto Deploy feature of Isolator. However this raised the question of how to manage the references within projects. You cannot just assume the Typemock assemblies are in the GAC, they are not on the build box using auto deploy. You could get all projects to reference the auto deployment location in source control. However, if you use build process templates across projects it might be you do not want to have production code referencing build tools in the build process are directly.
For most issues of this nature we now use Nuget. At Black Marble we make use of the public Nuget repository for tools such as XUnit, SpecFlow etc. but we also have an internal Nuget repository for our own cross project code libraries. This includes licensing modules, utility and data loggers etc.
It struck me after writing the last post that the best way to manage my Typemock references was with a Nuget package, obviously not a public one, this would be for Typemock to produce. So I create one to place on our internal Nuget server that just contained the two DLLs I needed to reference (I could include more but we usually only need the core and act assert arrange assemblies).
[Update 6th Aug PM] – After playing with this today seems I need the following in my Nuget package
Lib
Net20
Configuration.dll
Typemock.ArrangeActAssert.dll
TypeMock.dlll
If you miss out the configuration.dll it all works locally on a developers PC, but you get a ‘cannot load assembly error’ when trying to run a TFS build with Typemock auto deployment. Can’t see why obviously but adding the reference (assembly to the package) is a quick fix.
IT IS IMPORANT TO NOTE that using a Nuget package here in no way alters the Typemock licensing. Your developers still each need a license, they also need to install Typemock Isolator, to be able to run the tests and your build box needs to use auto deployment. All using Nuget means is that you are now managing references in the same way for Typemock as any other Nuget managed set of assemblies. You are internally consistent, which I like.
So in theory as new versions of Typemock are released I can update my internal Nuget package allowing projects to use the version they require. It will be interesting to see how well this works in practice.