Test Window Popup in Win 10/VS2015 with Win8 app

Hi

I am working on a project to deliver a Windows 8/Windows Phone 8.1 Universal app (not a Universal Windows Platform app). I have just upgraded my development environment to Windows 10 with Visual Studio 2015 and NCrunch.

When I enable NCrunch, a Test Window (blue window with a white clock/timer icon) pops up. One pop up appears for each test that is run. I'm working on a project with around 2,500 tests... I have to wait for all 2,500 tests to complete before I continue working, as the pop up steals focus and positions itself over the top of Visual Studio.

I am aware that in Windows 8 if you had a long running (async) test running, a test runner could appear in the background, but this would not intrude on what you're doing.

I have a standard, blank install of Visual Studio 2015 with ReSharper and NCrunch on Windows 10.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards
Will Cowell

[img=http://1drv.ms/1HvMTIS]Test Runner Window[/img]

Hi Will,

Thanks for sharing this issue. Unfortunately, I have only bad news to report here.

NCrunch is reliant on the IApplicationActivationManager.ActivateApplication service call to launch a Windows Store app (or test project) with its sandboxing intact. This is the same service call used by VSTest to launch your application when it runs automated tests, and it has an available option designed to suppress the splash screen when the application is launched.

Unfortunately, under Windows 10, the option to disable the splash screen has been completely broken. The splash screen will show regardless of anything passed into the service call.

You'll be able to observe this behaviour under Visual Studio by using VSTest to run your tests - it will display a splash screen. This never used to happen under Windows 8.1.

I've reported the issue to Microsoft here - https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/1640525/windows-store-app-activation-always-shows-splash-screen-even-when-instructed-not-to-by-api-call. Please throw whatever votes against this you can, as I feel this is a serious defect and MS should take notice of it.

Usually when something in the pipe goes wrong like this, there is some way to work around it through memory hacks or 'creative' solutions. Unfortunately in this case the problem is deep within the O/S itself, where application code just can't access it. At present I see no way of solving this problem from the side of NCrunch. The only way to continue to operate is to switch NCrunch into manual mode and run the tests manually, or alternatively downgrade to Windows 8.1 :(

Thanks for the heads up. I have distributed the link to my team for upvoting and will address directly with Microsoft. Let's see whether we can get this resolved!

I'm getting this issue escalated to Microsoft, as it's now become a blocker for our team.

In the meantime, I can confirm that I can run tests using vstest.console and it *doesn't* show the splash screen. Is it worth investigating how *vstest.console* inhibits the splash screen?

Sorry, support for Windows Store has now been dropped entirely in NCrunch - http://blog.ncrunch.net/post/Windows-Store-Apps-No-Longer-Supported-By-NCrunch.aspx.