Can tests be written in src projects without increasing published package size?

[devantler]

Hey,

Does the Source Generator approach allow putting unit tests in the src assembly without increasing package size at publish to e.g. Nuget or single-binary files?

I have for a long time been looking for feasible alternatives to having src/ and tests/ folders where each src project has an equivalent test project. I like the structure in src/ and tests/ projects to align, and it can be challenging and time-consuming when the projects change idependently. In many other programming languages tests are written side-by-side with the src code matching my preference. In dotnet test frameworks this preference has not been well supported historically, as it will increase the published package size.

[viceroypenguin]

I'm not aware of an easy way to do this. You could set up a publish configuration and use csproj magic to exclude certain files and dependencies for publish configuration. But that's incredibly non-traditional and will not be read well by future developers. Having separate src/ and test/ projects is the more idiomatic way.

[devantler]

Thanks, it sounds like it is not worth the hasle to me either 😊