I just blogged about this problem I was having with Gallio/MbUnit. I don’t regard the issue as fixed, but I’ve certainly worked around it.

I found that the delay happened when the tool Gallio.Utility.exe was being run during the startup process of Icarus. I noticed that the same thing happened when I tried to run other included tools like the control panel, and it also happened when using TestDriven to run an MbUnit test from VS. I had the impression that the tool was being run multiple times, but that turned out to be a mistake – the tool was simply running for a rather long time, jumping up and down a bit in the task manager list. I finally ran the tool on its own and found that (a) it has something to do with the plugins that Gallio apparently uses (for purposes unclear to me, I have to admit) and (b) even to just run the tool and display the usage info message in a console, it takes 25 seconds or so.

So, simple solutions are sometimes the best: I deleted Gallio.Utility.exe. Next run of Icarus, it was restored. Okay, MSI is more cleverer than I. Or so it thinks – I went and configured the file access permissions on the file and removed all access permissions. Hah, take that, MSI. Next run, Icarus comes up within about 3 seconds, taking another 2-3 to load my test assembly. Hah!

Running a test through TestDriven from VS takes about 3.9 seconds now, so it’s at least 2 times slower compared to running the same test through the CodeRush test runner. Weird, but then who am I to complain.

Now, could somebody please fix that Utility program before I end up needing it for something?