Revisit programmatic API

[novemberborn]

AVA exposes an API through require('ava/api'). It's what other Node.js programs should use (e.g. Gulp & Grunt, #345). Currently it's undocumented (#284).

Let's provide a reliable, documented, SemVer-compliant & public API.

Feature wise it should be possible to run individual tests, test files, and start watch mode, as well as interrupt test runs (#710). Integrations should be able to collect test results, both as they happen and as individual tests finish (see also #141).

Integrations should be able to use AVA configuration in package.json files without duplicating code from the CLI (#700).

This is blocked until AVA's internals settle further, so let's start by figuring out what we want out of this API. This won't be there for a 1.0 release.

[novemberborn]

While yes, we do want to support this, I don't think we need to keep this issue open. We'll get back to this eventually.

[MKRhere]

I ran into this issue while looking for an API. Since it's been two years, was there ever any work on this?

[novemberborn]

@MKRhere no. I think it's more likely we'll require AVA to be run in a child process, but allow you to load your own extensions into that process.

[MKRhere]

I understand the reasons behind the decision, I think. I strongly needed an API-first framework, so I've built one in the meanwhile. It doesn't do parallelisation yet, of course :)

Thanks a lot for responding! Overall a great job.