Visual Studio 2008 Test Result Cleanup!

I don't know how many other people used the MSTest (Unit Testing capabilities of Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition) but those test results really pile up after a while.

We currently have 525 unit tests on our current project. At one point in time I noticed that my disk space was running low on my development machine. I had no clue how so much space could evaporate so quickly. I started doing quick checks on different folders that I thought could be problematic. I eventually found my way to our solution folders. We typically have multiple branches loaded on our local machine, but I never thought we wrote enough code to justify a 20+ Gig project folder. Further investigation led me to a folder known as TestResults. I found out that Visual Studio was keeping the results of every unit test run I ever did.

Don't get me wrong, I love the ability to review past test runs to see where one failed. I really enjoy the ability to create bugs directly from the results of the test where the associated result is attached to the bug for the assigned developer to review (assuming it wasn't the assigned developer that noticed the failing test). But keeping a history of these files was really adding up!

I found myself deleting the old test runs from this folder every so often. Then something really interesting happened today. I tried running my full suite of tests after loading the solution in Visual Studio 2008. A message box appeared stating that my old test runs will be deleted since I will be over the maximum of 25 historical test runs. It made me agree to the deletion of these items and also told me that the number was configurable in the Tools > Options menu!

Now, maybe this feature existed in 2005, but I could never find it. This turns out to be one of those features that isn't really advertised, isn't major but just made me happy. For some reason it's the little things that seem to get me excited. It seems like this would have been so simple to leave out, yet they took care of it anyway.

Good job on that one Microsoft! You just made my life a little easier.

--John Chapman