--test-name-pattern needing to come before filenames is hostile to npm scripts

[domenic]

What is the problem this feature will solve?

It is common practice to set up npm scripts for testing. E.g.

{
  "test": "node --test tests/*.js more-tests/*.js"
}

However, this cannot be combined with --test-name-pattern. Attempting to do so, e.g.

npm test -- --test-name-pattern="my pattern"

will not work, because this gets translated to

node --test tests/*.js more-tests/*.js --test-name-pattern="my pattern"

which, I believe, ends up passing --test-name-pattern="my pattern" as an argument to these test files, instead of passing it as an argument to the test runner. The correct invocation is

node --test-name-pattern="my pattern" --test tests/*.js more-tests/*.js

but this is impossible to do via npm scripts, it seems. (See alternatives considered.)

What is the feature you are proposing to solve the problem?

I don't know what a good solution to this would be. Some possible ideas:

• Special-case command line processing such that when --test is present, node grabs the --test-name-pattern argument for itself instead of passing it to scripts?

• Introduce a new binary, e.g. node_test, which processes command-line arguments in such a way? I believe this is how most test runners behave.

• Introduce a file-based customization of the test runner, including which tests to run, so that I don't have to pass the test filenames as arguments to the test runner in a way that causes this problem?

• Improve npm scripts to support a better method of passing arguments in the middle of the script? (See below.)

What alternatives have you considered?

I investigated how to get npm scripts to substitute in arguments you pass to npm run into the script command, so that the translation becomes the correct one. This is a well-studied problem, and the following two Stack Overflow posts have the best answers, as far as I can tell:

• https://stackoverflow.com/q/11580961/3191
• https://stackoverflow.com/q/37869773/3191

None of them seem very satisfactory, unfortunately. In particular, if you want something that works cross-platform, you basically have to write a wrapper script.

As an alternative, I could continue using other test runners, which support npm scripts better.

[benjamingr]

@nodejs/test_runner @MoLow wdyt?

FWIW:

Introduce a file-based customization of the test runner, including which tests to run, so that I don't have to pass the test filenames as arguments to the test runner in a way that causes this problem?

You can do this using run, additionally you can pass parameters through the NODE_OPTIONS environment variable as a workaround.

[jacob-ebey]

I run into this all the time and if I could remove the script test:target for this use-case that would be phenomenal. Every single other test runner worth while accounts for this and has become part of my workflow that breaks in these setups.

[RedYetiDev]

you can pass parameters through the NODE_OPTIONS environment variable as a workaround.

--test-name-pattern and --test-skip-pattern aren't allowed in NODE_OPTIONS, would you like me to open a PR to change that?

➜  ~ node -v          
v22.1.0
➜  ~ NODE_OPTIONS="--test-name-pattern" node
node: --test-name-pattern is not allowed in NODE_OPTIONS
➜  ~ NODE_OPTIONS="--test-name-pattern=\"foo\"" node
node: --test-name-pattern= is not allowed in NODE_OPTIONS