Allow cut and paste in Unit Test output window.
After running a unit test it is possible to display the output of the test even if it passed.
In VS2010 the output pane was annoying, but the VS11 one is even worse. A common scenario is to copy the contents out of the output and paste them into something else for further analysis. This is especially important when a test generates a lot of output that needs to be looked through carefully - particularly during performance tuning where there may not be bugs but the Test output can provide valuable information about bottlenecks.
The new VS11 doesn't even support highlighting, cut & paste. I accept that most tests give little output, but even when you want to copy out stopwatch values accurately (for example) this becomes a huge pain! I consider the new test output window to be a regression from the existing functionality and would like to see it restored (if not improved).
Craig Dean
shared this idea
Visual Studio 2012 Update 1, http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/visual-studio-update has added the ability to copy all text from both the output window and the test details pane.
6 comments
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Douglas Waugh
commented
I've just installed Update 1 and I still can't selectively copy from the test explorer output window. I can copy the whole lot, but I can't highlight and copy a part of the output, which is what I need when using specflow.
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Sean Hanna
commented
This is a must-have, we religously write everything to the test output window and now i have to leave visual studio and use vim to access any of it.
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Craig Fisher
commented
Incredible that this was disabled!
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Ricardo Serradas commented
I really hope this is a TODO for the final version of VS12.
Copy & Paste in the output window is essential. There are many scenarios we can use a Unit Test to generate some useful data, like SQL Schema Generation (NHibernate)...
The Test Explorer window is another disaster in VS12, IMO.
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Gerson Dias
commented
This is a very basic feature and needed to work process! If it's not possible, maybe a lot of people don't will migrate to Visual Studio 2012!
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Rich Czyzewski
commented
This is essential for testing. I regularly copy and paste from the test output windows, especially in cases where a specific exception is thrown. Copy, Find in Files, Paste, Find All and you know what you have to fix.
Some testing tools like SpecFlow post useful output to the output window. In SpecFlow's case it provides code for step definitions you may have missed.
