If you’re a fan of the Microsoft Moles framework you’ve probably heard that it’s being included in Visual Studio 2012 as Microsoft Fakes.  As I was preparing my talk covering this isolation framework I noted some of the key differences between the two.  Rather than going back and updating my original post regarding Moles (much of which is still applicable even with terminology changes) I thought I’d list those differences here.  So without further ado:

• Assembly generation is driven by a .fakes file rather than a .moles file
• Isolation types are placed in a .Fakes assembly and .Fakes namespace
• Shim types replace Mole types
• Stub types are prefixed with “Stub”
• Shim types are prefixed with “Shim”
• ShimsContext replaces HostTypeAttribute for enabling profiling
• Profiling occurs in the IntelliTrace profiler rather than the Moles profiler
• Fakes allows shims for static constructors whereas Moles allowed erasing static constructors through an assembly attribute
• Fakes does not provide any support for finalizers whereas Moles allowed erasing finalizers through an assembly attribute
• Moles allowed controlling whether the profiler would run as a 32-bit or 64-bit process but this is now handled entirely by the IntelliTrace profiler
• The “classes” filter attribute was removed.
• Fakes supports isolating auto-implemented properties
• Fakes play much nicer with testing frameworks other than MSTest when run through Visual Studio