White-box Unit Testing - in whidbey

James Newkirk shows how to write a white-box test in Whidbey He shows how to test the value in a private field and invoke a private method. While you can (not so) easily do that today in NUnit, he demonstrates the PrivateObject class that lets you easily invoke private methods and look at private fields.

Could this “PrivateObject“ class be used for evil? Yes it could be used for evil - I imagine - but no more evil than that of reflection.

James has some great holy war type feedback about Should I or Shouldn't I white-box test. Those who say no probably haven't fought with unit testing a singleton class where we have to test it under multiple configurations that *normally* get set during the initial (private) constructor and/or the private methods called by the constructor. So yes, I can see a use. Is this an excuse? I haven't really thought of another technique....but to quote Michaelangelo, “I am still learning...” (via a silly set of fridge magnets I saw at Chapters today). The silly part of course is how one can learn from (and quote) a famous historical figure through something as silly as a fridge magnet.