Dynamically change main entry point in package.json when running tests

[mike-lischke]

My extension is bundled using esbuild and I set the produced out/main.js file as main entry point in package.json.

For testing I do not use esbuild, but tsc, which produces different files and I have to change the main entry point to out/extension/extension.js. Doing this manually is obviously not a good solution, so I wonder if and how I can override this when starting the tests with @vscode/test-electron?

[connor4312]

We don't support this, and it's unlikely that we would do it in this way. Some extensions compile their package.json into a subdirectory and launch out of there.

That said I understand the pain of testing when using a bundler to produce the extension. I want to find a homogenous solution to this case, but this approach is not complete. #186

[zm-cttae-archive]

Testability would be severely impacted by changing the main entry point. What if the test entry point meets the functional requirement of your test suite, but main doesn't? (E.g. does not error out on running activate... or returned API interface has specific behaviour)

[mike-lischke]

I'm all ears @M00TSDNS for a better solution, but changing the main entry point was the only way I could get both variations to work.

[zm-cttae-archive]

I used webpack-cli to bundle the main entrypoint of my library as UMD and it worked:

#186 (comment)

esbuild targeting node should work for node-only. Can you link your solution so we could feedforward?