Unable to enable NCrunch for new install

I downloaded NCrunch v1.34b for VS2010 and installed it on my machine. At the time of install, Visual Studio was not running. After opening an existing solution, the NCrunch menu displays, but the "Enable" menu option is grayed-out. I'm unable to find a way to enable NCrunch.

I tried multiple solutions of various sizes, as well as uninstalling/reinstalling NCrunch, but did not see a change in behavior.

I'm running VS2010 Ultimate, with ReSharper 5.1, VisualSVN 2.0.1, TestDriven.NET 3.0 Enterprise, PowerCommands for VS 1.0 and Gallio. My unit tests are written with MBUnit and run via Gallio, TestDriven.NET and/or ReSharper test runner.

I'd love to use this tool, so any assistance you can provide in getting it up and running would be greatly appreciated.

Hi John,

Thanks for posting. I received a bug report about the same thing (perhaps from you?), and it looked like an internal problem. I'll see what I can do about sorting it out in the next release - Sorry that I don't yet have enough information to provide a workaround.


Cheers,

Remco

The bug report was also from me. Let me know if there is any addition information I can provide to assist, or if you want me to try other steps to get around the issue. I did try installing the previous release, but had the same problem.

I'm really intrigued by this project and look forward to getting it running!
~John

Hi John,

I've had a good go at reproducing this problem but have had no luck in doing so.

It looks to me as though there is some strange behaviour inside your VS process around the UI message queues. Do you ever experience any unusual behaviour in VS? I'm wondering if it may be worth trying a reinstallation of Visual Studio.

I finally got enough "downtime" that I was able to fully uninstall and re-install VS and each of the plugins, checking the NCrunch menu after each. The good news is that after re-installing all of the addins I was previously using (with the exception of the Productivity Power Tools, which I previously had disabled), NCrunch is allowing me to enable it's functionality. So, in the end, I have no idea what was causing the issue, but it's gone, so we can just pretend it didn't exist to begin with :-)

Good to hear :) Do let me know if it happens to you again.

well when I came in this morning and opened up the same VS project which I had enabled NCrunch yesterday, the NCrunch functionality was again disabled. (NCrunch menu showed "Enable NCrunch" as grayed-out, Tests window was empty). I hadn't restarted the box, but I did close VS. I also connected to the machine via Remote Desktop overnight and ran VS, as well as installed a new ReSharper plugin (one which I did not have installed when I initially ran into this issue).

I closed and re-opened visual studio, and NCrunch appears to be enabled again, so perhaps this is now just intermittent. If I can better reproduce, or at least narrow, the conditions that lead to the disabled menu, I'll let you know.

On a side note, I'm having issues with NCrunch which appear to be related to referenced .dlls that are not in the GAC or created by the solution. I'll start a new thread for that issue.

Hi John,

I had a look through this one yesterday, and I've confirmed what seems to be causing it.

Something in your development environment (VCS software perhaps?) is setting a read-only lock on the .crunchsolution.local.xml file. This causes the engine to fail when it attempts to write settings as it enables/disables, and causes it to get into an inconsistent state. I've implemented a fix to be included in the next revision, but meanwhile as a workaround it may be worth taking the crunchsolution file out of your VCS or somehow turning off the locking. Once the engine has been caught by this issue, only an IDE restart will properly reset it.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Remco

The fix for the above problem has now been released as part of 1.36b.