Running NBench

NBench is always installed into your own console application and run from there, as we covered in the NBench Quickstart Tutorial.

Despite that, NBench has specific command line arguments it listens for and uses despite being hosted inside your own application:

dotnet run [YourNBench.dll] [--output {dir-path}] [--configuration {file-path}] [--include MyTest*.Perf*,Other*Spec] [--exclude *Long*] [--concurrent {true|false}] [--trace {true|false}] [--teamcity] [--diagnostic]

Commandline Arguments

  • assembly names - list of assemblies to load and test. Space delimited. Requires .dll or .exe at the end of each assembly name
  • --output-directory path - folder where a Markdown report will be exported. Report will look like this
  • --configuration path - folder with a config file to be used when loading the assembly names
  • --include name test pattern - a ","(comma) separted list of wildcard pattern to be mached and included in the tests. Default value is * (all) The test is executed on the complete name of the benchmark Namespace.Class+MethodName
  • --exclude name test pattern - a ","(comma) separted list of wildcard pattern to be mached and excluded in the tests. Default value is (none) The test is executed on the complete name of the benchmark Namespace.Class+MethodName
  • -- concurrent true|false - disables thread priority and processor affinity operations for all benchmarks. Used only when running multi-threaded benchmarks. Set to false (single-threaded) by default.
  • --trace true|false - turns on trace capture inside the NBench runner and will save any captured messages to all available output targets, including Markdown reports. Set to false by default.
  • --diagnostic - turns on diagnostic logging inside the NBench.Runner and dotnet-nbench executables.
  • --teamcity - turns on TeamCity message formatting.

Supported wildcard patterns are * any string and ? any char. In order to include a class with all its tests in the benchmark you need to specify a pattern finishing in *. E.g. include=*.MyBenchmarkClass.*.

Example patterns:

--include "*MyBenchmarkClass*" (include all benchmarks in MyBenchmarkClass)
--include "*MyBenchmarkClass+MyBenchmark" (include MyBenchmark in MyBenchmarkClass)
--include "*MyBenchmarkClass*,*MyOtherBenchmarkClass*" (include all benchmarks in MyBenchmarkClass and MyOtherBenchmarkClass)

--exclude "*MyBenchmarkClass* "(exclude all benchmarks in MyBenchmarkClass)
--exclude "*MyBenchmarkClass+MyBenchmark" (exclude MyBenchmark in MyBenchmarkClass)
--exclude "*MyBenchmarkClass*,*MyOtherBenchmarkClass*" (exclude all benchmarks in MyBenchmarkClass and MyOtherBenchmarkClass)