How to edit manually test run configuration settings for Test Manager

Question

Hi,

When I run several test cases (that include automated unit test) via the Test Manager, just the first one passes succesfully but the others fail with the following error:
"COM object that has been separated from its underlying RCW cannot be used"
If I run them each one separately they run succesfully.

I have read that I should set the test run configuration settings like that:

<ExecutionThread apartmentState="MTA" />

I would like to know how can I set the test run configuration settings for Test Manager. I managed to set configuration via the UI (test settings of aotumated run) , but I didn't find the required setting.

Is there any way to set configuration manually or other way to solve this issue?

Thanks

Answer 1

Hi Chavi,

Thank you for your post.

According to your description of the issue, I suppose you want to set unit test run in MTA mode through MTM. If I have misunderstood anything, please free feel to let me know.

Actually, you need to set it in unit test, you cannot set it in MTM.

In general, MTM is used to manage test, cannot do all the thing relate to test. For this issue, according to How to: Run Unit Tests in MTA mode, add MTA mode attribute to the Execution element is the concept of unit test. May be you need to let the unit test could run in MTA mode, then try to test it with MTM.

I hope this information will help resolve this issue.

If anything is unclear, please free feel to let me know.

Best regards,

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Lily Wu [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 2

Hi Chavi,

How about the issue now?

If anything is unclear, please free feel to let me know.

Best Regards,

---

Lily Wu [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 3

Hi Lily,

Thanks for answering. You got the problem right.

Our tests are performed against a COM interface as our product runs against a COM interface. To the best of my understanding, the only way of running multiple tests in one execution is using the MTA switch.

We have spent a great deal of effort organizing our testing setup with TFS and MTM and we now have hundreds of unit tests related to test cases. We want to run the using MTM on a test agent machine and manage our product quality with MTM.

Are you suggesting what we want to do is not possible?

Is the qualified Microsoft response?

Is this about to be fixed soon?

Is there a work around?

Best,

Chavi

Answer 4

Hi Chavi,

Thank you for your response.

I am trying to involve someone familiar with this topic to further look at this issue. There might be some time delay. Appreciate your patience.

Thank you for your understanding and support.

Best Regards,

---

Lily Wu [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 5

Hi Chavi,

Microsoft Test Manager does not expose any UI gesture to update the apartment state of the test settings. However you can update the test settings using the utility mentioned at the below link.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/aseemb/archive/2010/08/06/update-testsettings-utility.aspx

This utility by default does not expose updating the apartment state but you can easily add that support by changing its source code. Please try that out and let me know how it goes.

Regards

Aseem Bansal

Answer 6

Hi Aseem,

We tried your utility and it works!!!

Updating the apartment state was exposed already and we used your utility as is.

Now we can run mulitiple tests in one execution!

Thank a lot,

Chavi