Phil left a comment to yesterday's post saying that he'd heard good things about TypeMock, but that it wasn't free, so it's not useful in OSS situations. That got me wondering because I could have sworn that the Community Edition of TypeMock was free. Going over their website, it looks like that edition should be free, but they never come out and actually say so. The trouble is that there's a "30 day evaluation license" on the download page but that's not at all the same as being free.
A little digging reveals that the download of the TypeMock framework includes a demo mode that allows you to use all the Enterprise features, but for a single test only. Their price page doesn't list the Community edition at all. I just couldn't find whether the Community edition is truly, concretely free just from poking around. That information just isn't present. Since I was curious and all, I shipped them an email and asked outright, bringing up the OSS angle specifically.
In a pleasant surprise, I received an answer in just a couple of minutes. Here's the relevant portion:
The Community Edition is free to use! And you can use them on Open Source projects.
Good to know. I wish it were clearly stated on the website, but at least the impression I got wasn't misleading.
On a Related Note
The TypeMock front page has a link to Eli Lopian's blog (he's their CTO). I bring this up because one recent post demonstrates using TypeMock to test a form close event that throws up a confirm dialog. Now, I don't know about you, but a MessageBox.Show() call is practically untestable as far as I can see. Wrap it in an interface? Ugh. You'd want a broader UI communication interface and I cringe as I consider implementing such a thing.
Using TypeMock makes this relatively painless, however. His examples use objects only available in the Professional edition of TypeMock (the recorder objects), but the technique he uses is applicable in the community edition as well—just a little more complex. Nothing like what you'd have to do with dependency injection, though. The key is that using TypeMock, you can override any method of any type during your test. That's some mighty reflection Fu there.
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