2.0.0 Release Candidate 1

⚠️ If you're looking to upgrade from 1.4.1, make sure to read the Beta 1 and Beta 2 release notes.

Support for the new test & helper file selection in our ESLint plugin

AVA now exposes some methods to our ESLint plugin, allowing our plugin to support the new test & helper file selection. 51433be

Configurable object printing depth

AVA now uses the util.inspect.defaultOptions.depth option when printing objects. 98034fb

All changes

v2.0.0-beta.2...v2.0.0-rc.1

Thanks

Thank you @grnch. We couldn't have done this without you!

Get involved

We welcome new contributors. AVA is a friendly place to get started in open source. We have a great articleon getting started contributing and a comprehensive contributing guide.

2.0.0 Beta 2

⚠️ If you're looking to upgrade from 1.4.1, make sure to read the Beta 1 release notes.

Breaking changes

• Test implementations may return observables. We've updated our TypeScript definition to require these to have a Symbol.observable function. c2d8218

Test file and helper selection

AVA now also selects files ending with .spec.js when looking for tests. 08e99e5

You can now specify custom globs to select helper files:

{
  "ava": {
    "helpers": [
      "**/helpers/**/*"
    ]
  }
}

Bugfixes

• The dependency tracking in watch mode now respects custom require hooks you install in the worker processes. Thanks @lo1tuma! cb4c809
• The TypeScript definition once again allows test.skip(macro) ba5cd80

All changes

v2.0.0-beta.1...v2.0.0-beta.2

Thanks

Thank you @StoneCypher, @LukasHechenberger, @lo1tuma, @htor and @alexisfontaine. We couldn't have done this without you!

Get involved

We welcome new contributors. AVA is a friendly place to get started in open source. We have a great articleon getting started contributing and a comprehensive contributing guide.

2.0.0 Beta 1

Breaking changes

AVA now requires at least Node.js 8.9.4

Per the Node.js release schedule, the 6.x releases reach end of live on April 30th. Consequently we've removed support in AVA. We are now testing with Node.js 12 though. 3a4afc6

Test file and helper selection

We've been working on simplifying how test files and helpers are selected. First off, the files option now only accepts glob patterns. If you configured it with directories before, please add /**/* to get the previous behavior.

The files and sources options must now be arrays containing at least one pattern. It's no longer possible to override a default exclusion pattern, but we're looking at making these configurable separately.

AVA used to treat all files inside a helpers directory as test helpers. Finding these files could be really slow, however, and it also meant you couldn't have tests inside a helpers directory. Instead we're going to let you specify glob patterns to find these helpers. That work hasn't landed yet. For now, if you have such helpers we'd advise to not upgrade to this release.

Test files starting with an underscore are still recognized as helpers.

Files inside fixtures directories are no longer ignored, and will now be treated as test files. The watcher now also watches ava.config.js files.

The CLI now only takes file paths, not glob patterns.

We'd like some help updating our ESLint plugin as well.

Snapshots in CI

When you run tests locally and add a new snapshot, AVA automatically updates the .snap file. However if you forget to commit this file and then run your CI tests, they won't fail because AVA quietly updates the .snap file, just like it does locally.

With this release, AVA will fail the t.snapshot() assertion if it is run in CI and no snapshot could be found. 0804107

Assertion messages must be strings

AVA now enforces assertion messages to be strings. The message is only used when the assertion fails, and non-string values may cause AVA to crash. You may see test failures if you were accidentally passing a non-string message. 49120aa

Flow type definitions

We've decided to remove the Flow type definitions from AVA itself. We don't have anybody to maintain them and consequently they've become a blocker when adding features to AVA. c633cf0

We've set up a new repository from which we'll publish the definitions, but we need your help setting it up. If you use AVA and Flow, please join us in avajs/flow-typed#1.

Other changes

• We've added UntitledMacro and UntitledCbMacro types, for macro functions that will never have a .title function. Though really this just helped simplify the type definition. Thanks @qlonik! ebf4807

All changes

v1.4.1...v2.0.0-beta.1

Get involved

We welcome new contributors. AVA is a friendly place to get started in open source. We have a great article on getting started contributing and a comprehensive contributing guide.

1.4.1

Focusing power-assert

AVA comes with power-assert built-in, giving you more descriptive assertion messages. However it's been confusing to understand which assertions come with power-assert. To address this we've added the new t.assert() assertion. It's now the only assertion that is power-assert enabled. The assertion passes if called with a truthy value. Consider this example:

test('enhanced assertions', t => {
	const a = /foo/;
	const b = 'bar';
	const c = 'baz';
	t.assert(a.test(b) || b === c);
});

AVA will output:

6:   const c = 'baz';
7:   t.assert(a.test(b) || b === c);
8: });
Value is not truthy:
false
a.test(b) || b === c

=> false
b === c

=> false
c

=> 'baz'
b

=> 'bar'
a.test(b)

=> false
b

=> 'bar'
a

=> /foo/

Our ESLint plugin has been updated to support this new assertion. Many thanks to @eemed for implementing this! 9406470

Watch mode

Watch mode now prints the available commands. Thanks @KompKK! cd256ac

Bug fixes

• Filtered tests (when using --match, .skip() or .only()) are no longer included in the list of pending tests when timeouts occur or when you interrupt a test run. Thanks @vancouverwill! 23e302a
• We're now shimming all TTY methods in the worker processes, thanks to @okyantoro. c1f6fdf

Documentation updates

• We've added a note to say that, by default, AVA does not have a default test timeout. Thanks @amokmen! 99a10a1

All changes

v1.3.1...v1.4.1

Thanks

Thank you @eemed, @KompKK, @vancouverwill, @okyantoro and @amokmen. We couldn't have done this without you!

Get involved

We welcome new contributors. AVA is a friendly place to get started in open source. We have a great article on getting started contributing and a comprehensive contributing guide.

1.3.1

Bug fixes

• We've fixed a rather embarrasing bug with t.throws() and t.throwsAsync(). If you'd set a code expectation to a number we never actually checked that the thrown error had such a code! Thanks to @qlonik for both spotting and fixing this. 82daa5e
• 1.2.0 contained a regression which meant that if you faked clearTimeout(), you'd break AVA. That's now been fixed. 40f331c
• Snapshot files are now recognized as source files, so if you're using watch mode and you delete one, AVA won't rerun all your test files. d066f6f

New features

You can now use require() in ava.config.js files to load non-ES modules. 334e15b

All changes

v1.2.1...v1.3.1

Thanks

Thank you @itaisteinherz, @jdalton, @kagawagao, @KompKK, @SleeplessByte, @Chrisyee22 and @qlonik for helping us with this release. We couldn't have done this without you!

Get involved

We welcome new contributors. AVA is a friendly place to get started in open source. We have a great article on getting started contributing and a comprehensive contributing guide.

1.2.1

This is a bug fix release. In very large projects, the options send to worker processes would exceed limits on process argument size. We're now sending the options via the inter-process communication channel. 3078892

All changes 📚

v1.2.0...v1.2.1

Get involved ✌️

We welcome new contributors. AVA is a friendly place to get started in open source. We have a great article on getting started contributing and a comprehensive contributing guide.

1.2.0

New features

You can now set a timeout for test themselves. The test will fail if this timeout is exceeded. The timeout is reset each time an assertion is made:

test('foo', t => {
	t.timeout(100); // 100 milliseconds
	// Write your assertions here
});

b65c6d7

AVA also has a global timeout feature. The mini reporter now logs tests that were pending when those timeouts occur. Additionally, if you interrupt a test using ctrl+c we'll now also show the pending tests. 2b60556

Thank you @dflupu for your hard work on this!

Bug fixes and other improvements

• We're no longer truncating multi-line error messages 72e0762
• Unexpected errors in the throws assertions are now reported with the correct stack trace ad087f2
• The Debugging with VSCode recipe has been updated with the correct workspaceFolder variable 0a5fe42 and --serial argument placement edfc005

All changes 📚

v1.1.0...v1.2.0

Thanks 💌

💖 Huge thanks to @anishkny, @CrispusDH, @dflupu and @niktekusho for helping us with this release. We couldn’t have done it without you!

Get involved ✌️

We welcome new contributors. AVA is a friendly place to get started in open source. We have a great article on getting started contributing and a comprehensive contributing guide.

1.1.0

New features

AVA now exports a meta object. Currently, you can retrieve the path of the test file being run:

import test from 'ava';

console.log('Test currently being run: ', test.meta.file);

import {meta} from 'ava';

console.log('Test currently being run: ', meta.file);

This is useful in helpers that need to know the test file. bccd297

Bug fixes and other improvements

• t.log() now works in hooks d187712

• Error output for improper usage of t.throws() once again links to the correct documentation dc552bc

• We've added a section on webpack aliases to the Babel recipe c3bcbf2

• We've updated the Vue recipe for Babel 7, and added a section on webpack aliases c3bcbf2

All changes 📚

v1.0.1...v1.1.0

Thanks 💌

💖 Huge thanks to @fitztrev, @forresst, @astrob0t, @pearofducks, @coreyfarrell and @dflupu for helping us with this release. We couldn’t have done it without you!

Get involved ✌️

We welcome new contributors. AVA is a friendly place to get started in open source. We have a great article on getting started contributing and a comprehensive contributing guide.

1.0

AVA 1.0 🚀

Back in January we started work on the 1.0 release, taking the opportunity to upgrade to Babel 7 and follow its beta releases. It's been a year where we made massive improvements to AVA. It's also been a year with many exciting events in our personal lives. Be it honeymoons & weddings, work & friends, naturalizations and international relocations.

So, we're done. Or, rather, we're just beginning. Testing can be a drag. AVA helps you get it done. Its concise API, detailed error output, embrace of new language features and process isolation let you write tests more effectively. So you can ship more awesome code or do non-programming things.

Starting now we'll push out patches and new features more regularly. And, when the time comes, ship a 2.0 and a 3.0 and so forth. If you like what we're doing, why not try and contribute? We're a friendly bunch and we could use your help to make AVA even better.

We couldn't have gotten here without the nearly one hundred people who've contributed more, and the many more who suggested improvements, reported bugs and provided feedback. And, of course, everyone who's used AVA. Thank you for your enthusiasm and support.

Mark & Sindre

What's new & improved

Assertions

New t.throws() behavior & t.throwsAsync()

We've rewritten t.throws() so it behaves better, has better error output and lets you write better tests:

• The assertion takes a first thrower argument. It must throw an exception, or your test fails. Throwing other values like strings also causes your test to fail.
• The exception must be an error object.
• The assertion returns the exception.

You have a few ways of asserting that the exception is as designed. You can pass a second argument:

• If you pass a function it should be a constructor: the exception must be an instance of it. Previously you could pass a validation function. This is no longer possible.
• If you pass a string: the exception's message should be equal to it.
• If you pass a regular expression: the exception's message should match it.

The most exciting new feature though is that you can pass an expectation object. A combination of the following expectations is supported:

t.throws(fn, {code: 'ENOTFOUND'}) // err.code === 'ENOTFOUND'
t.throws(fn, {code: 9}) // err.code === 9
t.throws(fn, {instanceOf: SyntaxError}) // err instanceof SyntaxError
t.throws(fn, {is: expectedErrorInstance}) // err === expectedErrorInstance
t.throws(fn, {message: 'expected error message'}) // err.message === 'expected error message'
t.throws(fn, {message: /expected error message/}) // /expected error message/.test(err.message)
t.throws(fn, {name: 'SyntaxError'}) // err.name === 'SyntaxError'

This makes tests like these much easier to write:

// Old assertion
const err = t.throws(fn, TypeError)
t.is(err.message, 'Expected a string')

// New assertion
t.throws(fn, {
	instanceOf: TypeError,
    message: 'Expected a string'
})

We've removed promise support from t.throws() and t.notThrows(). Use the new t.throwsAsync() and t.notThrowsAsync() assertions instead. Support for observables has been removed completey.

The original behavior was both hard to explain and hard to express in Flow and TypeScript. Now, if you have a function that throws a synchronous error, use t.throws() (or t.notThrows()). If you have a promise that should reject, or an asynchronous function that should fail, use await t.throwsAsync() (or await t.notThrowsAsync()).

Generally speaking, you should be able to replace every occurence of await t.throws with await t.throwsAsync, and await t.notThrows with await t.notThrowsAsync. A transform file for jscodeshift is available in this Gist. Run it like:

$ npx jscodeshift -t https://gist.githubusercontent.com/novemberborn/c2cdc94020083a1cafe3f41e8276f983/raw/eaa64c55dfcda8006fc760054055372bb3109d1c/transform.js test.js

Change test.js to a glob pattern that matches your test files. See the jscodeshift CLI usage documentation for further details.

Bound assertion methods

Assertion methods are now bound to the test, meaning you can provide them as direct arguments to other functions. A contrived example:

const assertEach = (arr, assert) => {
  arr.forEach(value => assert(value));
};

test('all are true', t => {
  assertEach(getArray(), t.true);
});

Whilst not strictly assertions, t.plan() and t.log() are now also bound to the test.

BigInt

As part of our Node.js 10 support you can now use BigInt values in t.deepEqual() and t.snapshot(). Note that this is still a stage-3 proposal.

Babel 7

AVA now uses Babel 7, with support for babel.config.js files. We'll automatically use your project's Babel configuration. Babel options must now be specified in a testOptions object. This will allow us to add source related options in the future.

Our @ava/stage-4 preset is now accessible via ava/stage-4. We've added transforms for the latest ES2018 features where available (and even an ES2019 one!). You can also disable ava/stage-4 entirely:

package.json:

{
  "ava": {
    "babel": {
      "testOptions": {
        "presets": [
          ["ava/stage-4", false]
        ]
    }
    }
  }
}

Or, you can disable just ES module compilation:

package.json:

{
  "ava": {
    "babel": {
      "testOptions": {
        "presets": [
          ["ava/stage-4", {"modules": false}]
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

The powerAssert option and command line flags have been removed. You can now disable AVA's test enhancements by setting compileEnhancements to false. You can also disable AVA's Babel pipeline entirely:

package.json:

{
  "ava": {
    "babel": false,
    "compileEnhancements": false
  }
}

Serial hooks and context

Hooks declared using test.serial will now execute serially. Only one of those hooks will run at a time. Other hooks run concurrently. Hooks still run in their declaration order.

Note that concurrent tests run concurrently. This means that .beforeEach() and .afterEach() hooks for those tests may also run concurrently, even if you use test.serial to declare them.

t.context can now be used in .before and .after hooks.

CLI

Pass flags to your test

AVA now forwards arguments, provided after an -- argument terminator, to the worker processes. Arguments are available from process.argv[2] onwards.

npx ava test.js -- hello world

There's a new recipe on how to use this.

Previously AVA populated process.argv[2] and process.argv[3] with some undocumented internal values. These are no longer available.

Resetting AVA's cache

The --no-cache CLI flag has been replaced by a --reset-cache command. The latter resets AVA's regular cache location. You can still disable the cache through the cache configuration option.

npx ava --reset-cache

Configuration

Introducing ava.config.js

You can now configure AVA through an ava.config.js file. It must be placed next to the package.json, and you mustn't have any "ava" options in the package.json file. Export the configuration as a default:

export default {
    babel: {
        extensions: ['js', 'jsx']
    }
};

Or export a factory function:

export default ({projectDir}) => ({
    babel: {
        extensions: ['js', 'jsx']
    }    
});

Following our convention to use ES modules in test files, we're expecting ES modules to be used in the configuration file. If this is causing difficulties please let us know in #1820.

Configurable test & helper file extensions

You can now tell AVA to run test files with extensions other than js! For files that should be compiled using Babel you can specify babel.extensions:

package.json:

{
  "ava": {
    "babel": {
      "extensions": ["js", "jsx"]
    }
  }
}

Or define generic extensions, e.g. for use with TypeScript:

package.json:

{
  "ava": {
    "compileEnhancements": false,
    "extensions": ["ts"],
    "require": [
      "ts-node/register"
    ]
  }
}

Note that AVA still assumes test & helper files to be valid JavaScript. They're still precompiled to enable some AVA-specific enhancements. You can disable this behavior by specifying "compileEnhancements": false.

Snapshots

Adding new snapshots no longer causes the Markdown files to become malformed. Snapshots are now consistent across operating systems. If you've previously generated snapshots on Windows, you should update them using this release.

We now support BigInt and <React.Fragment> in t.snapshot(). We've also improved support for the Symbol.asyncIterator well-known symbol. Unfortunately these changes are not backwards compatible. You'll need to update your snapshots when upgrading to this release.

We've improved how AVA builds snapshot files to better support precompiled projects. Say, if you compile your TypeScript test files using tsc before running AVA on the build output. AVA will now use the source map to figure out the original filename and use that as the b...

1.0.0-rc.2

Release Candidate Two 🎷

Okay then, barring any surprises, the next release is the 1.0. But first, there's some changes we want to get out while we work on the celebratory blog post 😉

Please give this release a try and let us know of any problems. And as always with pre-releases, be sure to install an exact dependency. However unlikely, there may still be breaking changes between now and the final 1.0 release:

npm install --save-dev --save-exact ava@next

Please see the release notes for the previous betas:

• beta 1
• beta 2
• beta 3
• beta 4
• beta 5
• beta 6
• beta 7
• beta 8
• release candidate 1

Highlights

Better snapshot files for pre-built files

We've improved how AVA builds snapshot files to better support precompiled projects. Say, if you compile your TypeScript test files using tsc before running AVA on the build output. AVA will now use the source map to figure out the original filename and use that as the basis for the snapshot files. You'll have to manually remove snapshots generated by previous AVA versions. a130a9e

Set default title using parameters syntax

Macros can generate a test title. Previously, AVA would call the title function with an empty string if no title was given in the test declaration. Now, it'll pass undefined instead. This means you can use default parameters. Here's an example:

import test from 'ava'

const failsToParse = (t, input) => {
	t.throws(parse(input))
}

failsToParse.title = (providedTitle = 'unexpected input') => `throws when parsing ${providedTitle}`

test('malformed', failsToParse, fs.readFileSync('fixtures/malformed.txt'))
test(failsToParse, Buffer.from('}', 'utf8'))

This is a breaking change if you were concatenating the provided title, under the assumption that it was an empty string. aa35f15

TypeScript now type-checks additional arguments used by macros

When using TypeScript, you must now type the arguments used by the macro 6f54db8:

import test, {Macro} from 'ava'

const failsToParse: Macro<[Buffer]> = (t, input) => {
	t.throws(parse(input))
}

failsToParse.title = (providedTitle = 'unexpected input') => `throws when parsing ${providedTitle}`

test('malformed', failsToParse, fs.readFileSync('fixtures/malformed.txt'))
test(failsToParse, '}') // ⬅️ fails to compile

Bug fixes and other improvements

• Correctly insert a trailing newline when appending new snapshot entries. bf00d79
• Better error messages when used with esm 37390e6
• Support Node.js 11 afe028a
• New recipe on how test webapps using AVA and Puppeteer 6ab6d35

All changes 📚

v1.0.0-rc.1...v1.0.0-rc.2

Thanks 💌

💖 Huge thanks to @forresst, @sh7dm and @qlonik for helping us with this release. We couldn’t have done it without you!

Get involved ✌️

We welcome new contributors. AVA is a friendly place to get started in open source. We have a great article on getting started contributing and a comprehensive contributing guide.