autotest

For use during development of a node.js or python based application.

autotest will watch all the files in the directory in which you started autotest. If any change, it will automatically rerun your tests.

The entry point of your test suite can be specified in the package.json file:

{
	...
	'scripts' : {
		'test' : 'test/index.js'
    }
    ...
}

autotest --npm will behave as if you ran npm test in the directory where you have your package.json. This enables you to use a test framework such as expresso, which provides automatic test discovery.

Use the --ignore argument to have autotest ignore changes to specific files. For example, you could issue autotest --ignore "*.log|*.out" to ignore any log files that are created or updated during your tests and prevent autotest from restarting the suite when files matching these specs are updated.

Be aware that to ignore all log files you'll have to enclose the pattern in quotes, otherwise the shell's substitution will take precedence. For example, if there is a npm-debug.log file in the folder:

# autotest --npm --ignore *.log 
--> actually runs
# autotest --npm --ignore npm-debug.log 
--> if you want to ignore all log files, run
# autotest --npm --ignore "*.log"

Installation

Either through forking or by using npm (the recommended way):

npm install autotest -g

And autotest will be installed in to your bin path. autotest works best if it is installed in the global registry as it provides direct access to the autotest command line utility; if you choose to perform a local install then you need to start the monitor using: ./node_modules/.bin/autotest.