Feature request: better error reporting when mocha can't find tests (getting started)

[richburdon]

The getting started tutorial on the home page looks pretty simple, but if you put the test in a different directory than "test" it's suddenly not very friendly:

/usr/local/lib/node_modules/mocha/lib/utils.js:628
throw new Error("cannot resolve path (or pattern) '" + path + "'");
^

Error: cannot resolve path (or pattern) 'test'
at Object.lookupFiles (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/mocha/lib/utils.js:628:15)
at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/mocha/bin/_mocha:326:30
at Array.forEach (native)
at Object. (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/mocha/bin/_mocha:325:6)
at Module._compile (module.js:413:34)
at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:422:10)
at Module.load (module.js:357:32)
at Function.Module._load (module.js:314:12)
at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:447:10)
at startup (node.js:142:18)
at node.js:939:3

[govind999]

I am also getting the same error, any update on this?

[gurdiga]

Purely theoretically speaking, this doesn’t look like an exception, and we could handle it gracefully — I’m guessing just print an explanatory message to STDERR, and exit Node with non-zero status. 🤔

What do you guys think? 🤓

[jsynowiec]

If several globs are provided (for e.g. with braced sections), mocha shouldn't exit with non-zero code or throw an error util all paths are checked for tests. Currently if I run mocha with a glob like {client,server}/*[sS]pec.js even if there are tests present in the second directory, mocha throws an error.

[Munter]

How about this take on it? #2450