Hi, thanks for posting!

NCrunch emulates the behaviour of MSTest's sandboxing, so it will execute tests within a shadow copied directory that is positioned relative to the project file in the NCrunch workspace. So basically it creates a shadow copy of a shadow copy (confusing I know).

You have a few options here:
1. Reference the ShipmentDocs.txt using the relative path: ..\..\..\TestData\Shipmentdocs.txt
2. Add a [DeploymentItem(@"TestData\ShipmentDocs.txt")] attribute to the test that uses the resource file. This will tell the MSTest runner to deploy the file into the MSTest sandbox
3. Use a different test framework that isn't MSTest

I hope this helps!


Cheers,

Remco

Sorry - I made the mistake of thinking that this resource file originated from the test project itself, rather than a project referenced by it. This makes the solution a bit more limited and more complicated.

The resource file will always be located relative to the assembly built from the project containing it. Because NCrunch arranges projects in isolation, it isn't possible to introduce relative path references between your projects to resolve resource files. Instead, you need to rely on reflection. Have a look at the following example code that could be placed inside your test project:

var resourceFileAssemblyLocation = typeof(TypeWithinProjectContainingResource).Assembly.Location;
var directoryOfResourceAssembly = Path.GetDirectoryName(resourceFileAssemblyLocation);
var pathToResourceFile = Path.Combine(directoryOfResourceAssembly, @"TestData\Shipmentdocs.txt");
Assert.IsTrue(File.Exists(pathToResourceFile)); // Should pass assertion

It's also safe to resolve resource locations like this in your production code, and it's actually better practice than relying on Directory.GetCurrentDirectory(), as in this way your application behaviour is not determined by the current directory that is defined when the O/S loads it.

I'll make a note to have a closer look at how resource files are handled in these kind of situations to see if I can come up with a cleaner, more intuitive approach that doesn't require code alterations. Meanwhile, I hope this will solve your immediate problem.


Cheers,

Remco