Hi, thanks for sharing this issue.
NCrunch does support custom trait attributes, but only if the
Framework Utilisation Type for XUnit/Gallio is set to 'DynamicAnalysis'.
The reason for this is that NCrunch needs to execute your run-time code in order to resolve the custom trait. This is something that Static Analysis cannot do, as Static Analysis can only skim over the assembly metadata.
There is an unfortunate drawback involved in making this switch. The Gallio adapter being used by NCrunch to integrate with XUnit does not perform very well with Dynamic Analysis. It's for this reason that the default is set to Static Analysis. You may want to experiment with this setting to see if the performance cost is worth having strongly typed categories.
There are plans to introduce direct integration between NCrunch and XUnit with the new XUnit version soon being released (XUnit V2). In doing so, performance for Dynamic Analysis will likely be improved.
Cheers,
Remco