I’ve been trying out VS14 CTP4, doing some code katas and I was thinking if there is a better way I could set up my Visual Studio environment. The NuGet console works well for running tests on the command line or committing code but of course there is an XUnit runner plugin that works well to run the tests from within the IDE. After checking what the gurus say it seems having the test and the production code side by side is the way to go, which is easy when you have one class and one test. Ideally there would be a way to keep the window structure organised in some semi-automated way, but my limited googling has not given me any good answers, although unpinning most windows and keeping the test runner at the bottom and test- and production code in the rest of the screen is quite usable.

I haven’t installed ReSharper on this Visual Studio CTP which gives me a rare opportunity to try the native features before ReSharper saves the day and although the shortcuts are wrong (but you could easily remap Ctrl+. to Alt+Enter and feel less lost immediately) it does have the most basic features you need such as extract method and rename.

Overall it is possible to have a neat workflow as before but you would be hard pressed to let go of ReSharper as the quick create-shortcuts and the easy-to-use refactorings are hard to live without once you have used them in anger.