counsel-test

An emacs package that integrates ivy/counsel with different testing frameworks.

This package is inspired by helm-ctest, huge thanks to the author.

Disclaimer: This package is still rather small and simple. It may contain bugs and other errors. I have been using it for a half of a year already at my work and it proved to be useful. Now I have decided that counsel-test can be useful for someone else too. The idea is to have core generic functionality for test discovery and execution in compilation buffer with a collection of framework integrations on top of that. I plan to enhance this package with support for other frameworks and add some helpful features in the future. Feedback is highly appreciated!

Installation

MELPA

M-x package-install [RET] counsel-test [RET] or

(use-package counsel-test
  :ensure t)

Manual installation

First, clone this repo. Then, load the package with the method of your choice (e.g. load-path/require, use-package etc). An example with use-package:

(use-package counsel-test
  :load-path "~/.emacs.local/counsel-test")

Usage

Currently, there is a basic support only for two testing frameworks: ctest and pytest. There are two separate commands for them: counsel-test-ctest and counsel-test-pytest respectively.

In your project it is sufficient to invoke one of them, say M-x counsel-test-ctest. You will be prompted for the directory with ctest tests. After this, you will see a list of the available tests. You can pick any test or even a group of tests (with the help of ivy-mark). Note that the directory you have selected won't be cached, so each subsequent call to counsel-test-ctest will ask you for the directory again.

An alternative solution is to add counsel-test-dir variable to the project dir-locals.el. This will remove the need to select the test directory manually again and again or after emacs restarts or during switching between different projects.

Manual test directory selection will still be available with the help of prefix argument: C-u M-x counsel-test-ctest.

If something goes wrong during test discovery, an error message will be shown in the echo area and you may view the discover function output in a dedicated buffer: *counsel-test-<program>-log*.

Customization

This package contains several variables that allow certain customization on the per-project basis. They have sensible defaults but it is strongly recommended to set some of them in dir-locals.el for each project separately.

Common variables

• counsel-test-dir - directory from where to run the test discovery and test execution commands. Default value is nil. When nil the user is asked for the directory interactively. This is the primary candidate for being a dir-local variable. Note that currently, when setting this in dir-locals.el you have to provide the absolute path. Relative paths do not work for now.

Ctest specific variables

• counsel-test-ctest-env - environment variable settings for the ctest tests execution. The default value is '("CLICOLOR_FORCE=1" "CTEST_OUTPUT_ON_FAILURE=1") to enable colors and test output only in case of failures. More variables can be found in ctest docs.

• counsel-test-ctest-cmd - command that is used to run ctest, defaults to "ctest". If you wish to use the custom ctest binary, point this variable to it, e.g. (setq counsel-ctest-cmd "path/to/custom/ctest-bin). Keep in mind that this variable value is forwarded to call-process as program argument, so it should be available on your system.

Pytest specific variables

• counsel-test-pytest-env - environment variable settings for pytest tests discovery. The default value is nil. This should be a list of "ENV=value" strings (see process-environment). This may be particularly handy if you need to update your PYTHONPATH before running pytest.
• counsel-test-pytest-cmd - command that is used to run pytest, defaults to "pytest". Can be altered similar to counsel-test-ctest-cmd.

Integration with other frameworks

I plan to add support for other frameworks, but if you can't find what you need, it is easy to implement the integration yourself. Don't forget to submit pull-request with your implementation!

To add custom integration, you have to implement two functions:

1. discover-func - test discovery function. It does not accept any arguments and has to return a list of strings, representing possible tests (selections). These will be shown in minibuffer with ivy, so you may need to make them look user-friendly.
2. create-cmd-func (selections) - function that creates a test execution command from the provided selections. It has one argument selections which is a list of strings you pick in minibuffer with ivy (a subset from the discover-func results). This function should return a string representing a shell command that will be run in compilation buffer.

After providing these two implementations, say counsel-test-framework--discover and counsel-test-framework--create-cmd, you need to define your entry-point through call to counsel-test function:

(defun counsel-test-framework (arg)
  "Browse and execute framework tests.

With a prefix argument ARG also force prompt user for this directory."
  (interactive "P")

  (counsel-test 'counsel-test-framework--discover
                'counsel-test-framework--create-cmd
                'counsel-test-framework
                arg))

And then you are ready to go!

For concrete examples, refer to implementations in counsel-test-ctest.el and counsel-test-pytest.el.

Contributing

Please, feel free to ask any questions and submit bugs, issues or pull requests. All contributions are welcome!