mix test.interactive
is an interactive test runner for ExUnit tests.
Based on Louis Pilfold's wonderful mix-test.watch and inspired by Jest's interactive watch mode, mix test.interactive
allows you to dynamically change which tests should be run with a few keystrokes.
It allows you to easily switch between running all tests, stale tests, or failed tests. Or, you can run only the tests whose filenames contain a substring. Includes an optional "watch mode" which runs tests after every file change.
The package can be installed by adding mix_test_interactive
to your list of dependencies in mix.exs
:
def deps do
[
{:mix_test_interactive, "~> 3.2", only: :dev, runtime: false}
]
end
Run the mix task:
mix test.interactive
Your tests will run immediately (and every time a file changes).
If you don't want tests to run automatically when files change, you can start mix test.interactive
with the --no-watch
flag:
mix test.interactive --no-watch
After the tests run, you can use the interactive mode to change which tests will run.
Use the p
command to run only test files that match one or more provided patterns. A pattern is the project-root-relative path to a test file (with or without a line number specification) or a string that matches a portion of full pathname. e.g. test/my_project/my_test.exs
, test/my_project/my_test.exs:12:24
or my
.
Any patterns that contain a line number specification are passed directly to
mix test
. Remaining patterns are matched against test filenames as above.
p pattern1 pattern2
Use the s
command to run only test files that reference modules that have changed since the last run (equivalent to the --stale
option of mix test
).
Use the f
command to run only tests that failed on the last run (equivalent to the --failed
option of mix test
).
Use the a
command to run all tests.
Use the w
command to turn file-watching mode on or off.
Use the Enter
key to re-run the current set of tests without requiring a file change.
Use the q
command, or press Ctrl-D
to exit the program.
Any command line arguments passed to the mix test.interactive
task will be passed
through to the task being run, along with any arguments added by interactive mode. If I want to see detailed trace information for my tests, I can run:
mix test.interactive --trace
mix test.interactive
will detect the --stale
and --failed
flags and use those as initial settings in interactive mode. You can then toggle those flags on and off as needed. It will also detect any filename or pattern arguments and use those as initial settings. However, it does not detect any filenames passed with --include
or --only
. Note that if you specify a pattern on the command-line, mix test.interactive
will find all test files matching that pattern and pass those to mix test
as if you had used the p
command.
mix test.interactive
can be configured with various options using application
configuration.
If you want mix test.interactive
to clear the console before each run, you can
enable this option in your config/dev.exs as follows:
# config/config.exs
import Config
if Mix.env == :dev do
config :mix_test_interactive,
clear: true
end
By default, mix test.interactive
uses mix test
to run tests.
You might want to provide a custom command that does other things before or
after running mix
. In that case, you can customize the command used for
running tests.
For example, you might want to provide a name for the test runner process to allow connection from other Erlang nodes. Or you might want to run other commands before or after running the tests.
In those cases, you can customize the command that mix test.interactive
will
use to run your tests. mix test.interactive
assumes that the custom command
ultimately runs mix
under the hood (or at least accepts
all of the same command-line arguments as mix
). The custom command can either be a string or
a {command, [..args..]}
tuple.
Examples:
# config/config.exs
import Config
if Mix.env == :dev do
config :mix_test_interactive,
command: "path/to/my/test_runner.sh"
end
# config/config.exs
import Config
if Mix.env == :dev do
config :mix_test_interactive,
command: {"elixir", ["--sname", "name", "-S", "mix"]}
end
To run a different mix task instead, see the task
option below.
To stop changes to specific files or directories from triggering test runs, you
can add exclude:
regexp patterns to your config in mix.exs
:
# config/config.exs
import Config
if Mix.env == :dev do
config :mix_test_interactive,
exclude: [~r/db_migration\/.*/,
~r/useless_.*\.exs/]
end
The default is exclude: [~r/\.#/, ~r{priv/repo/migrations}]
.
By default, mix test.interactive
will trigger a test run when a known Elixir
or Erlang file has changed, but not when any other file changes.
You can specify additional file extensions to be included with the
extra_extensions
option.
# config/config.exs
import Config
if Mix.env == :dev do
config :mix_test_interactive,
extra_extensions: ["json"]
end
mix test.interactive
always watches files with the following extensions:
.erl
, .ex
, .exs
, .eex
, .leex
, .heex
, .xrl
, .yrl
, and .hrl
. To
ignore files with any of these extensions, you can specify an exclude
regexp
(see above).
By default mix test.interactive
uses an internal module named
MixTestInteractive.PortRunner
to run the tests. If you want to
run the tests in a different way, you can supply your own runner module instead.
Your module must implement a run/2
function that takes a
MixTestInteractive.Config
struct and a list of String.t()
arguments.
# config/config.exs
import Config
if Mix.env == :dev do
config :mix_test_interactive,
runner: MyApp.FancyTestRunner
end
By default, mix test.interactive
runs mix test
.
Through the mix config it is possible to run a different mix task. mix test.interactive
assumes that this alternative task accepts the same
command-line arguments as mix test
.
# config/config.exs
import Config
if Mix.env == :dev do
config :mix_test_interactive,
task: "custom_test_task"
end
The task is run with MIX_ENV
set to test
.
To use a custom command instead, see the command
option above.
When timestamp
is set to true, mix test.interactive
will display the
current time (UTC) just before running the tests.
# config/config.exs
import Config
if Mix.env == :dev do
config :mix_test_interactive,
timestamp: true
end
On Linux you may need to install inotify-tools
.
You can enable desktop notifications with ex_unit_notifier.
This project started as a clone of the wonderful mix-test.watch project, which I've used and loved for years. I've added the interactive mode features to the existing feature set.
The idea for having an interactive mode comes from Jest and its incredibly useful interactive watch mode.
Copyright (c) 2021-2024 Randy Coulman
This work is free. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the MIT License. See the LICENSE.md file for more details.