Sub folders ignored (even with --recursive) when tests present in parent folder

[adamreisnz]

I'm encountering a strange issue, which I assume is a bug.

The relevant folder structure looks roughly like this:

app
  |_ shared
    |_ helpers

My mocha.opts contains the following:

--recursive
--require test/helpers/setup
--require mocha-clean

And I am running Mocha using an NPM run script, using:

mocha app/**/*.spec.js

This was working fine as long as I only had tests in the shared/helpers folder. The moment I created a .spec.js file in the shared folder itself, the tests from shared/helpers were no longer executed.

I found a fix for this on StackOverflow, which recommended putting the tests command in a string, like so:

mocha "app/**/*.spec.js"

However, not sure if that's an artefact of npm or an issue with Mocha.

I also tried to put app/**/*.spec.js as the last parameter in mocha.opts, but that had the same effect, and putting quotes around it in there caused Mocha to crash.

If any more information is required to reproduce/debug this please let me know.

[stephanebruckert]

Kind of the same for me, but in the opposite order. Only the tests in the sub folders were executed (shared/helpers) and the ones in the current folder (shared) weren't.

Thanks for pointing a fix out, surrounding the path with quotes fixed the issue.

[actonw]

Running into this as well.

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[ScottFreeCode]

This is Posix shells expanding the path before passing it to Mocha; if they're not configured to treat ** recursively, they'll replace it with only one level of directories, so to make your paths reliable you have to quote them, otherwise Mocha never gets the chance to do anything about it.

[avocadoslab]

Had exactly same issue on Mac and adding single quotes around path after --recursive fixed the issues.

[mscottx88]

Unfortunately, this fix does not work cross-platform.

On Windows:
mocha -c --reporter=spec --require test/setup.js --recursive test/integration/**/*.spec.js 👍
mocha -c --reporter=spec --require test/setup.js --recursive 'test/integration/**/*.spec.js' 👎

On Mac:
mocha -c --reporter=spec --require test/setup.js --recursive test/integration/**/*.spec.js 👎
mocha -c --reporter=spec --require test/setup.js --recursive 'test/integration/**/*.spec.js' 👍

Keep trying!

[harrysarson]

@mscottx88 Does replacing ' with " fix the problem on windows?

[mscottx88]

Yes it does :) That is the cross-platform solution we needed!

mocha -c --reporter=spec --require test/setup.js --recursive \"test/integration/**/*.spec.js\"
(as embedded in an npm run "integration" script)

Windows & Mac 👍 👍

[hilleer]

I just came across this issue and for others that might find it too, I can confirm surrounding the path with double quotes solved the issue for me too (on mac).

[basickarl]

Yes it does :) That is the cross-platform solution we needed!

mocha -c --reporter=spec --require test/setup.js --recursive \"test/integration/**/*.spec.js\"
(as embedded in an npm run "integration" script)

Windows & Mac

Doesn't work on Bash on Linux.

GNU bash, version 4.3.48(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
Linux version 4.10.0-32-generic (buildd@lcy01-01) (gcc version 5.4.0 20160609 (Ubuntu 5.4.0-6ubuntu116.04.4) ) #3616.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Wed Aug 9 09:19:02 UTC 2017

[ericminio]

Working on Bash on Ubuntu 20.04: mocha $(find <folder> -name '*.spec.js')