Why does TestInitialize get fired for every test in my Visual Studio unit tests?

I'm using Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. I've got a single [TestClass], which has a [TestInitialize], [TestCleanup] and a few [TestMethods].

Every time a test method is run, the initialize and cleanup methods are ALSO run!

I was under the impression that the [TestInitialize] & [TestCleanup] should only be run once, per local test run.

Is that correct? If not, what is the proper way to do this?

Solution 1:

TestInitialize and TestCleanup are ran before and after each test, this is to ensure that no tests are coupled.

If you want to run methods before and after ALL tests, decorate relevant methods with the ClassInitialize and ClassCleanup attributes.

Relevant information from the auto generated test-file in Visual Studio:

You can use the following additional attributes as you write your tests:

// Use ClassInitialize to run code before running the first test in the class
[ClassInitialize()]
public static void MyClassInitialize(TestContext testContext) { }

// Use ClassCleanup to run code after all tests in a class have run
[ClassCleanup()]
public static void MyClassCleanup() { }

// Use TestInitialize to run code before running each test 
[TestInitialize()]
public void MyTestInitialize() { }

// Use TestCleanup to run code after each test has run
[TestCleanup()]
public void MyTestCleanup() { }

Solution 2:

this is rather standard behaviour for test suites: setup and teardown before and after each test. The philosophy is that tests should not depend on each other. If you want another behaviour, you should probably use static objects that persist between each test.