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Using for Test Automation

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Roman Kuzmin edited this page Aug 20, 2022 · 18 revisions

Invoke-Build happens to be useful for test automation, especially in PowerShell oriented projects. It is easy and natural to organize PowerShell tests as tasks in build scripts. The following supportive features are offered right away:

  • assert and equals are must have features.
  • Tests start, end, output, and duration logging.
  • Tests are invoked individually or by sets (*, **).
  • Tests may have dependencies and hierarchical structure.
  • Tests have easy access to files using relative file paths.
  • Tests are invoked once even if referenced by multiple parents.
  • Build results can be obtained for detailed analysis and reports.

At the same time Invoke-Build is not specifically designed to be a test system. But for lightweight testing of relatively small projects it does the job very well with minimum extra effort. Small or not, Invoke-Build has more than 300 test tasks.

Batch tasks * and **

The special tasks * and ** are used in order to make invocation of tests easy. The following command invokes all tasks (tests) defined in the script:

Invoke-Build * Smoke.test.ps1

The task ** invokes * for all files *.test.ps1 found in the directory Tests and its subdirectories:

Invoke-Build ** Tests

When the switch Safe is used together with ** then build failures stop current test scripts, not the whole testing, invocation of remaining test scripts continues:

Invoke-Build ** -Safe

Safe is often used together with Summary or Result. The switch Summary tells to print task records including errors after the build. The parameter Result is used in order to get build data for further detailed analysis and reports, see Build Analysis.

With * and ** there is no need to call tests individually or register them for testing. As soon as a test task is added to a script, it gets invoked when a script is invoked with *. Note that dependencies are taken into account, * invokes task trees starting from roots. Without dependencies tasks are invoked in their natural order in scripts.

Unlike **, the batch task * is found useful not just for tests. Some scripts may be designed so that their tasks should be invoked together.

Examples in projects

Below is the list of some projects where all tests are implemented as tasks and tested by Invoke-Build exclusively. The links are project directories with tests.

Helpers

Appendix

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