Installation¶

Note: If you are new to SpecFlow, we recommend checking out the Getting Started guide first. It will take you through the process of installing SpecFlow and setting up your first project and tests in Visual Studio.

SpecFlow consists of three components:

The IDE Integration that provides a customized editor and test generation functions within your IDE.
The generator that can turn Gherkin specifications into executable test classes, available from NuGet.
The runtime required for executing the generated tests. There are different runtime assemblies compiled for different target platforms. These packages are also available from NuGet.

In order to install everything you need, you first have to install the IDE integration and then set up your project to work with SpecFlow using the NuGet packages.

Installing the IDE Integration¶

The process of installing the IDE Integration packages depends on your IDE.

Visual Studio¶

We recommend installing the SpecFlow Visual Studio extension (IDE Integration), as this is the most convenient way of working with SpecFlow. Find out how to install and use this extension here.

Rider¶

Rider has an official SpecFlow plugin, find out how to install and use it here.

MonoDevelop/XamarinStudio/Visual Studio for Mac¶

We don’t maintain our own extension for MonoDevelop/XamarinStudio/Visual Studio for Mac. But our amazing community created on at https://github.com/straighteight/SpecFlow-VS-Mac-Integration.

VSCode¶

We currently don’t have our own extension for VSCode.

For creating new projects, we recommend to use our .NET templates.

To improve your developing and scenario writing experience, we recommend following VSCode extensions:

Cucumber (Gherkin) Full Support - for editing feature files
.NET Core Test Explore - for executing scenarios

Project Setup¶

The generator and runtime are usually installed together for each project. To install the NuGet packages:

Right-click on your project in Visual Studio, and select Manage NuGet Packages from the menu.
Switch to the Browse tab.
Enter “SpecFlow” in the search field to list the available packages for SpecFlow.
Install the required NuGet packages. Depending on your chosen unit test provider, you have to use different packages. See this list to find the correct package