Getting exit code -5 with NUnit console runner 3.8, using NUnit 3.10

The console runner exits with exit code -5. However, when I lookup the source here, this is commented out. There is no additional information with the exit (no errors, apart from the usual from failing tests).

My project uses 3.10 most recent NUnit framework, the console runner is 3.8, it is run from within TeamCity. What does this exit code mean and if it is valid, is it possible to give some more information when this situation occurs?

[CharliePoole]

Either approach should work.

[abelbraaksma]

Just a heads-up, mystery solved for the exit code -5 (and on some other versions, exit code -100).

In case you’re curious (and thanks for all your patience and help!):

There appeared to be a statically inlined method that caused a stack-overflow. It is understandable that NUnit cannot deal with StackOverflowException, though I know there are some (complex) ways to track them (one program that does this correctly is NCrunch). The hard part in finding the exception was that the test causing it was never in the log and the moment it happened changed between runs.

The exception in other test engines never occurred because it was only triggered in a Debug.Assert that only fired in very specific circumstances, that were true on the build server when run from TeamCity and that were triggered by daylight savings time switching, but not true when run from the commandline on the same server (ouch, I know, that dependency should never have been there).

Of course, it would still be very nice to see a stacktrace and perhaps there’s something that can be done by catching a first-chance exception or something, I don’t know. Either way, I am not too surprised now that I know the underlying reason.