Using FitNesse with .Net across multiple servers

Question

My previous work involved writing embedded Linux code. We used a couple of the embedded devices in a test harness, a Linux PC and the Windows Perforce repository. The Linux PC ran an instance of FitNesse and used (among other things) the CommandLineFixture to cross-compile the latest binaries, deploy them to the target, and then execute the tests.

My current project involved the Microsoft stack, developing web services. I would like to be able to use FitNesse to test out this system, but I'm at a loss as to where to start. The Linux system meant all that bash scripting goodness, so building (make), deployment (ssh or scp) and collating results (scp) were all easy.

I'm assuming I can use a similar chain under Windows-only:

• MSBuild for building
• putty for deployment / collating results

but deployment of IIS web services seems more complex than just copying files.

Do you have any pointers?

Answer 1

I've been using SpecFlow, C#, NUnit and WebDriver to handle much of this. I write all of my tests within Visual Studio and use PowerShell to check source out, compile and start the tests to check my site and services. This gives it a nice framework feel, and once the updated Build System is complete I can add my tests into the build system, my PowerShell commands are written as functions so it will be easier to run the tests. I used Fitnesse before and had some success with it, but had problems migrating the tests across servers, even using REST I had issues and a lot of scripts that I really didn't need for what I was doing. SpecFlow and NUnit gave me the ability to reuse more of my scripts than Fitnesse did, mostly for being able to direct my tests to different machines which I found difficult to do in Fitnesse and easy to do in SpecFlow and NUnit.