Let stdin be passed through to jest-cli

[seanpoulter]

Do you want to request a feature or report a bug? A feature

What is the current behavior?
When Jest runs in watch mode, jest-cli only listens for input from text terminals that send characters one at a time in "raw mode". This dependency on tty.ReadStream#setReadMode in jest/packages/jest-cli/src/watch.js prevents anyone who's spawned Jest as a child process from interacting with the watcher (e.g.: IDE extensions like vscode-jest).

What is the expected behaviour?
How do you feel about using setRawMode when it's available, and letting whatever data through if a feature toggle is set (e.g.: a CLI arg or process.env)? Any thoughts on the feature toggle?

Suggested change:
From:

  if (typeof stdin.setRawMode === 'function') {
    stdin.setRawMode(true);
    stdin.resume();
    stdin.setEncoding('hex');
    stdin.on('data', onKeypress);
  }

To:

  const useRawInput = typeof stdin.setRawMode === 'function';

  if (useRawInput) {
    stdin.setRawMode(true);
  }
  if (useRawInput || roughEdgeFeatureToggle) {
    stdin.resume();
    stdin.setEncoding('hex');
    stdin.on('data', onKeypress);
  }

On my end it's the lowest overhead of:

• using stdin that's piped in
• kill/respawn Jest processes when things in the "globalConfig" change
• refactor watch.js to extract the dependency on input method

Thanks!

[SimenB]

Any drawbacks to this? /cc @rogeliog @orta

[seanpoulter]

Ugh. There's also a simple workaround, sorry. Got too caught up in the problem to see that we can spawn a child process using Node's --require arg to pre-load a stub for setRawMode. I'll close the issue since this is WAY easier for such a low reward Issue.

[SimenB]

Should it be in the docs?

[seanpoulter]

Is there a spot you had in mind to document it? I think we'll be OK. This feature is will end up with a PR to extend jest-editor-support so we can interact with watch from vscode-jest. Since both of those packages are already cited as examples for how to interact with Jest, I can make sure to add extra context in the paper trail.

[SimenB]

Yeah, might not be any fitting place for it as we don't really document any programmatic APIs

[seanpoulter]

With @segrey thinking the node --require workaround "doesn't look safe enough" I'd say we've got enough interest to support non-raw mode terminals. Let's figure this one out.

What's our next steps @segrey?

[SimenB]

I still think the original suggestion makes sense

[segrey]

What concerns me a bit is that the node --require workaround may stop working for piped stdin at some point in future. A possible idea is make non-raw terminal case prominent in code, in hope that subsequent changes in this area will respect it. Something like the proposed change by @seanpoulter in the issue description would be nice. Additionally, we can remove MockStdin.setRawMode method.

[seanpoulter]

Should we go ahead and add a CLI option then? I don't really want to add clutter, but it seems to be the best spot for our use case and to document the feature.

Non-raw mode is called "cooked" or "canonical" but it could also be "rare". As much as I want to suggest "allow cooked stdin" as an option, how about:

--acceptPipedStdin:
Use this flag to interact with Jest from another process when stdin is not in raw mode.

Other than a few more tests, I think that's the scope of the change.

[segrey]

Maybe we can support piped stdin always? (Are there cases when it should be disabled?)
If yes, then adding a test for piped stdin to prevent regressions would be enough imho.

[seanpoulter]

Maybe we can support piped stdin always?

Oooh, brave. 👍 Right now Jest stays open waiting for input that'll never come, right? Can only get better from there. If you enter an unrecognized key in the watch usage prompt there's no action, so we're good on that end too (observed at the prompt, not via a code review).

[seanpoulter]

You might like to have a look at #5399 @segrey. It's an interesting proposal to build on the watch mode plugin API. It's operating right in the same block of code where isInteractive is false and we can't see the prompt.

[segrey]

Unfortunately, after #4958, no watch usage is shown if jest process is running in non-interactive environment. Since IDEs/tools start jest test runner with redirected streams, no watch usage is shown here.

[wintercounter]

I'd like to spawn a jest-cli child-process dynamically but it simply breaks on first input. Would be nice to find a permanent solution to this.

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