Avoid restoring SDK dependency anchors in CI

[Amaury Levé (Evangelink)]

Summary

• move the Dependabot-only Microsoft.Playwright.MSTest.v4 and Aspire.Hosting.Testing references into a dedicated non-building project
• omit those references when restoring TestFx.slnx, while preserving them for Dependabot's direct project discovery
• remove the anchors from the MSTest acceptance-test restore graph

This avoids downloading Playwright's roughly 772 MB payload on every solution restore without disabling its dependency updates.

Validation

• generated solution and direct-project restore graphs: TestFx.slnx has zero anchor dependencies, while the Dependabot project has both
• completed a cold full-solution restore into an isolated package directory: 216 packages / 6.17 GB extracted, with zero Microsoft.Playwright* packages

[github-actions]

Note

🤖 Automated review by GitHub Copilot. Generated by the Expert Code Review workflow. To request a follow-up action, reply by tagging @copilot directly.

Review Summary

Clean PR — moves Dependabot anchor PackageReferences from the acceptance test project into a dedicated eng/Dependabot.Dependencies/Dependabot.Dependencies.csproj, eliminating unwanted transitive restore of heavy packages (Playwright) during test builds.

#	Dimension	Verdict
1	Algorithmic Correctness	✅ N/A — no logic changes
2	Edge-Case Robustness	✅ N/A
3	Concurrency & Thread Safety	✅ N/A
4	Performance & Allocation	✅ N/A
5	Security	✅ N/A
6	Public API Surface	✅ No public API change
7	Backward Compatibility	✅ No behavioral change
8	Error Handling & Observability	✅ N/A
9	Cross-TFM Correctness	✅ Single net8.0 TFM; only used as a restore anchor
10	Localization	✅ N/A
11	Test Coverage	✅ N/A — infrastructure-only
12	Test Quality	✅ N/A
13	Code Style & Conventions	✅ Follows repo conventions
14	Naming	✅ Clear project name
15	Documentation & Comments	✅ Thorough XML comments explaining the SolutionPath gating and why PackageDownload doesn't work
16	MSBuild Correctness	✅ Build="false" in slnx + SolutionPath condition correctly isolates anchors from solution builds
17	IPC & Protocol	✅ N/A
18	Dependency Management	✅ Anchors use ExcludeAssets="all" and are CPM-managed
19	Configuration	✅ N/A
20	Scope Discipline	✅ Single concern — relocate Dependabot anchors
21	Licensing & Copyright	✅ N/A
22	TODO Policy	✅ No TODOs

Overall: No issues found. The SolutionPath condition is a nice touch — it ensures the anchors are only restored when Dependabot runs project discovery (where SolutionPath is unset), preventing the large Playwright transitive closure from being downloaded during normal solution restores. The Build="false" marker in TestFx.slnx and the absence from .slnf filters are both correct.

[github-actions]

🧵 Parallel-safety audit — PR #10741

Nothing audited here touches process-global state, shared filesystem paths, or [ResourceLock] / [DoNotParallelize] declarations. Nothing to flag for parallel-safety.

This PR changes only Directory.Packages.props, TestFx.slnx, a new eng/Dependabot.Dependencies/Dependabot.Dependencies.csproj, and removes a PackageReference anchor block from test/IntegrationTests/MSTest.Acceptance.IntegrationTests/MSTest.Acceptance.IntegrationTests.csproj. That .csproj under test/ matched the config-file filter (it is a .csproj), but its diff only removes two Dependabot-anchor PackageReference items (Aspire.Hosting.Testing, Microsoft.Playwright.MSTest.v4, both ExcludeAssets="all") — no MSTestParallelizeScope/MSTestParallelizeWorkers property, <Parallelize> runsettings node, testconfig.json setting, or [assembly: Parallelize]/[assembly: DoNotParallelize] attribute is touched. No .cs test files changed at all.

Audited test/IntegrationTests/MSTest.Acceptance.IntegrationTests (config file touched, no parallelization-relevant change found).

_{Re-run with /parallel-audit.}

🤖 Automated content by GitHub Copilot. Generated by the Parallel-safety audit on PR (on open / sync) workflow. · auto · 45.3 AIC · ⌖ 2.18 AIC · ⊞ 24.8K · [◷]( · ◷)

[github-actions]

🧪 Expert test review — PR #10741

No new or modified test methods were identified in the changed regions of this PR. Nothing to review.

_{Re-run with /review-tests.}

🤖 Automated content by GitHub Copilot. Generated by the Test Reviewer on PR (on open / sync) workflow. · auto · 29.8 AIC · ⌖ 0.887 AIC · ⊞ 16.9K · [◷]( · ◷)

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Moves Dependabot-only dependency anchors out of the acceptance-test restore graph to reduce CI restore size.

Changes:

• Adds a non-building Dependabot dependency project.
• Excludes anchor packages from solution restores.
• Updates related dependency documentation.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
TestFx.slnx	Registers the anchor project without building it.
eng/Dependabot.Dependencies/Dependabot.Dependencies.csproj	Hosts restore-isolated package anchors.
MSTest.Acceptance.IntegrationTests.csproj	Removes anchors from acceptance tests.
Directory.Packages.props	Updates anchor-location documentation.

Review details

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• Files reviewed: 4/4 changed files
• Comments generated: 1
• Review effort level: Balanced