Mocha 8.3.1 breaks ability to add configuration to tail of it blocks

[bcoe]

Prerequisites

• Checked that your issue hasn't already been filed by cross-referencing issues with the faq label
• Checked next-gen ES issues and syntax problems by using the same environment and/or transpiler configuration without Mocha to ensure it isn't just a feature that actually isn't supported in the environment in question or a bug in your code.
• 'Smoke tested' the code to be tested by running it outside the real test suite to get a better sense of whether the problem is in the code under test, your usage of Mocha, or Mocha itself
• Ensured that there is no discrepancy between the locally and globally installed versions of Mocha. You can find them with: node node_modules/.bin/mocha --version(Local) and mocha --version(Global). We recommend that you not install Mocha globally.

Description

In a few places in our codebases we configured retries and timeout using the following syntax:

 it('should delete note', () => {
    const output = execSync(`node deleteNote.js "${projectId}" "${noteId}" `);
    assert.include(output, `Note ${formattedNoteName} deleted.`);
    // Sometimes the delete note test is failing with the error:
    // Error: 5 NOT_FOUND: note with ID "test-note-${uuid}" for project
    // ${projectId} does not exist.
    // Attempting to work around this issue by retrying a few times.
    // DO NOT MERGE.  If this works, we should submit an upstream bug.
  }).retries(3);

In #4574 helpers like it() are refactored, such that they're wrapped in a closure and no longer have the attributes .retries(), .timeout(), etc.

Steps to Reproduce

Use mocha 8.3.1 to run the following block:

it('foo').retries(3);

Expected behavior: [What you expect to happen]

Settings can be chained on to it block.

Actual behavior: [What actually happens]

Exception occurs.

Reproduces how often: [What percentage of the time does it reproduce?]

Always happens.

Versions

Mocha 8.3.1.

Additional Information

One potential patch is returning the result of it.apply in the new closures that have been introduced.

[juergba]

@bcoe thanks for reporting this bug.

Your sample is not completely correct though, and I'm glad about this 😅.
It only breaks when you import or require the it() function.

import {it} from 'mocha';
it('foo').retries(3);

[bcoe]

Your sample is not completely correct though, and I'm glad about this

@juergba ohhhh, that makes a lot of sense. I was surprised you didn't have more bug reports.