Debugging with MacOS

• Open terminal
  • Hit command-space, type terminal, hit enter. Alternatively, hit magnifying glass (spotlight) in upper-right corner and search for terminal.
• Build and run tests
  • Navigation in terminal is similar to command prompt (cd), although you type ls in place of dir.
  • Use ./build.sh -test instead of .\build.cmd -test.
  • If tests fail, they will appear twice in red: once when the test fails and once after all tests have run. As an example, it might say XUnit : error : Tests failed: /Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/TestResults/Debug/Microsoft.Build.Utilities.UnitTests_netcoreapp2.1_x64.html [netcoreapp2.1|x64] [/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/src/Utilities.UnitTests/Microsoft.Build.Utilities.UnitTests.csproj] near the end.
  • Successful tests appear in white and only once like this: Tests succeeded: /Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/bin/Microsoft.Build.CommandLine.UnitTests/Debug/netcoreapp2.1/Microsoft.Build.CommandLine.UnitTests.dll [netcoreapp2.1|x64]
• Choose a set of tests to analyze.
  • From the previous example, one sample would be Microsoft.Build.UnitTests_netcoreapp2.1_x64, that is, the part immediately preceding .html.
• Run find . -name Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests_netcoreapp2.1_x64.log
  • Note the addition of the extension .log in place of .html.
  • This should print out a path (from your current working directory) to the relevant log file.
• Type tail -n 1 <path from previous step>
  • This prints out the last line of that file.
  • You can also just open it normally from a finder window.
  • This file contains the standard output from the last run.
  • You may notice that the line printed by this command is a single (long) command line statement.
• Copy the command line statement from the previous step. Remove the portion after the redirection (> character not preceded by 2) including that character. You may notice that part redirects output to the file you’re viewing.
  • The last part (2>&1) redirects standard error (using 2>) to the same place as where standard out is going (&1), in this case this log file.
  • If you would like to rerun all tests from a given class (rather than just a specific method), you can append -class and the class's fully qualified name. To run all tests from TaskBuilder_Tests, for instance, you would add -class Microsoft.Build.UnitTests.BackEnd.TaskBuilder_Tests and run the statement without the following steps. Note that in the example below, standard output is redirected to /dev/null, thus only printing the errors.
• Prepend ./build.sh && to the truncated command line statement.
• Append -method and the name of the method you want to test to the end.
  • You can find the failing method by opening the html file (/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/TestResults/Debug/Microsoft.Build.Utilities.UnitTests_netcoreapp2.1_x64.html from the above case) in a web browser of choice. You will need to prepend file:// if you use Safari.
  • This will show a list of failing methods including why they failed.
• Running this statement will run just the one test (after building) and print out both the error and the Console.WriteLine() statements you added to the test/what it calls.

Sample statements with outputs below and changes to the output of the second command bolded (note that additionally, the last two lines and one character of the second output were deleted):

<pre><code> $ find . -name Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests_netcoreapp2.1_x64.log ./artifacts/log/Debug/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests_netcoreapp2.1_x64.log $ tail -n 1 ./artifacts/log/Debug/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests_netcoreapp2.1_x64.log "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/.dotnet/dotnet" exec --depsfile "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/bin/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests/Debug/netcoreapp2.1/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests.deps.json" --runtimeconfig "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/bin/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests/Debug/netcoreapp2.1/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests.runtimeconfig.json" "/Users/forgind/.nuget/packages/xunit.runner.console/2.4.1/tools/netcoreapp2.0/xunit.console.dll" "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/bin/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests/Debug/netcoreapp2.1/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests.dll" -noautoreporters -xml "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/TestResults/Debug/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests_netcoreapp2.1_x64.xml" -html "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/TestResults/Debug/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests_netcoreapp2.1_x64.html" -notrait category=nonosxtests -notrait category=netcore-osx-failing -notrait category=nonnetcoreapptests -notrait category=failing > "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/log/Debug/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests_netcoreapp2.1_x64.log" 2>&1 $ "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/.dotnet/dotnet" exec --depsfile "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/bin/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests/Debug/netcoreapp2.1/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests.deps.json" --runtimeconfig "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/bin/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests/Debug/netcoreapp2.1/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests.runtimeconfig.json" "/Users/forgind/.nuget/packages/xunit.runner.console/2.4.1/tools/netcoreapp2.0/xunit.console.dll" "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/bin/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests/Debug/netcoreapp2.1/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests.dll" -noautoreporters -xml "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/TestResults/Debug/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests_netcoreapp2.1_x64.xml" -html "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/TestResults/Debug/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests_netcoreapp2.1_x64.html" -notrait category=nonosxtests -notrait category=netcore-osx-failing -notrait category=nonnetcoreapptests -notrait category=failing -class Microsoft.Build.UnitTests.BackEnd.TaskBuilder_Tests > /dev/null Microsoft.Build.UnitTests.BackEnd.TaskBuilder_Tests.NullMetadataOnLegacyOutputItems [FAIL] $ <b>./build.sh &&</b> "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/.dotnet/dotnet" exec --depsfile "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/bin/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests/Debug/netcoreapp2.1/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests.deps.json" --runtimeconfig "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/bin/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests/Debug/netcoreapp2.1/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests.runtimeconfig.json" "/Users/forgind/.nuget/packages/xunit.runner.console/2.4.1/tools/netcoreapp2.0/xunit.console.dll" "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/bin/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests/Debug/netcoreapp2.1/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests.dll" -noautoreporters -xml "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/TestResults/Debug/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests_netcoreapp2.1_x64.xml" -html "/Users/forgind/Desktop/code/msbuild/artifacts/TestResults/Debug/Microsoft.Build.Engine.UnitTests_netcoreapp2.1_x64.html" -notrait category=nonosxtests -notrait category=netcore-osx-failing -notrait category=nonnetcoreapptests -notrait category=failing <b>-method Microsoft.Build.UnitTests.BackEnd.TaskBuilder_Tests.NullMetadataOnLegacyOutputItems</b> </code></pre>