Command Line

Run tests in the command line

The vstest.console.exe is the command-line tool used by Visual Studio to run tests.

Using VSTest from a visual studio installation

Open a Developer Command Prompt, or you can find the vstest.console.exe in the Visual Studio installation folder, commonly found at:

%Program Files (x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\<version>\<edition>\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TestWindow

Using VSTest from the TestPlatform package

Download the latest TestPlatform package from the Microsoft NuGet site and decompress it, you will find the vstest.console.exe at Tools\net451\Common7\IDE\Extensions\TestPlatform

This method can be useful to distribute a test Assembly with VSTest, which can test cases or reproduce issues on different machines without requiring a Visual Studio installation. The next layout shows the structure of a distributable folder.

📦MyDistributableFolder
 ┣ 📂TestPlatform
 ┃  ┣ 📂Common7
 ┃  ┗ 📂Team Tools
 ┗ 📂Test
    ┗ 📜myProject.Test.dll

Examples

To run the tests that use QualityMate that uses a .runsettingsfile, you will need to append the option /Settings:[FilePath]. to the VSTest executable, for example:

vstest.console.exe path\to\myProject.Test.dll /Settings:path\to\mySettings.runsettings

Multiple Assemblies can be used with the command below:

vstest.console.exe path\to\myProject.Test.dll path\to\otherProject.Test.dll /Settings:path\to\mySettings.runsettings

Filters can be used specify which test cases are going to run based on its traits such as [Priority] using the command:

vstest.console.exe path\to\myProject.Test.dll /Settings:path\to\mySettings.runsettings /TestCaseFilter:"Priority=1"

For more information about the VSTest commands, you can find Microsoft's documentation about the vstest.console.exe options here.