Upgrading from NUnit 2.2 to 2.4

Until recently, I was running NUnit 2.2.9 on both my work and home computers. This weekend I decided to upgrade my home computer to version 2.4.3. The quick and painless process went as follows:

1) Uninstall v2.2.9
2) Install v2.4.3
3) Open an existing project containing unit tests
4) Updating the references to point to the new assemblies
5) Compile and run...

Well, it all worked except for that last step. At one point, I seem to recall NUnit requiring you to reference nunit.core. Whatever that reason, it's no longer a requirement, and was the cause of the build failure. After removing the reference, everything ran as before.

Constraint-based assertions

One of the most noticeable changes in version 2.4 was the inclusion of constraint-based assertions, similar to some of the mock frameworks available. Previously, you might write assertions like:

Assert.IsTrue(age < 21);
Assert.AreEqual(9, age);

Using constraints, you can now write:

Assert.That(age, Is.LessThan(21));
Assert.That(age, Is.EqualTo(9));

Also, if your test fixture is derived from AssertionHelper, you can shorten the previous lines to:

Expect(age, LessThan(21));
Expect(age, EqualTo(9));

Note: you will need to add using statements for NUnit.Framework.Constraints and NUnit.Framework.SyntaxHelpers. For more examples, including comparisons to the older Assert methods, look for AssertSyntaxTests.cs under the NUnit install directory.