Pester Task

Overview

The Pester task runs tests using the PowerShell testing framework Pester.

The task supports Pester version 5 and later. By default the latest version of Pester 5, i.e. 5.*, is used to run your tests. Use the Version property to use a specific version of Pester, wildcards supported. If you need to use an older version of Pester, see the Pester3 and Pester4 tasks.

Pass a dictionary of parameters to the Configuration property to specify the [PesterConfiguration] object to use. This dictionary is passed to New-PesterConfiguration to create the [PesterConfiguration] object that will be passed to Invoke-Pester. The [PesterConfiguration] is how you control what Pester will do via parameters such as Run.Path, Run.ExcludePath, TestResults.Enabled.

Pass a dictionary of parameters to the Container property to specify the [ContainerInfo] object to use. This dictionary is passed to New-PesterContainer to create the [ContainerInfo] object that will be passed to Invoke-Pester. The [ContainerInfo] object is used to pass parameter-input to Pester .Tests.ps1 files with a param() block.

Test reports are saved to the output directory in NUnit XML format. The report files are named pester+RANDOM_STRING.xml, where RANDOM_STRING is a random strings of characters.

Properties

• AsJob: by default, the task runs Pester in Whiskey's private scope in the same PowerShell session/process that the Whiskey build was started with. To run Pester tests in an new, independent PowerShell process via a PowerShell job, set this to true
• Configuration: a dictionary of parameters passed to New-PesterConfiguration to create the [PesterConfiguration] object that's passed to Invoke-Pester.
• Container: a dictionary of parameters passed to New-PesterContainer to create the Pester [ContainerInfo] object that's passed to Invoke-Pester.
• Version: the version of Pester to use, wildcards supported. Defaults to the latest version of Pester 5, i.e. 5.*.

Examples

Example 1

Build:
- Pester:
    Configuration:
      Run:
        Path: 'Test\*.Tests.ps1'

Demonstrates how to run Pester tests. In this case, all the tests in files that match the wildcard Test\*.Tests.ps1 are run.

Example 2

Build:
- Pester:
    Configuration:
      Run:
        Path: 'Test\*.Tests.ps1'
        ExcludePath: '*.NotATest.ps1'

Demonstrates how to use the Pester Configuration's ExcludePath property to exclude tests from running. In this example, all tests in the Tests directory that end in ".Tests.ps1" will be run, except those that end in ".NotATest.ps1".

Example 3

Build:
- Pester:
    Configuration:
      Run:
        Path: 'Test\*.ps1'
        TestResult:
          Enabled: true

Demonstrates how to use the Pester Configuration's TestResult property to produce test results for all the tests in files that match the wildcard "Test*.ps1".

Example 4

Build:
- Pester:
    Configuration:
      Run:
        Path: 'Test\*.Tests.ps1'
    Version: 5.3.*

Demonstrates how to pin Pester to a specific version, the latest "5.3" patch version in this case.