Using the Runner
To run a suite of tests from the command line, you can use the org.scalatest.tools.Runner
Application.
Note: this application offers the full range of ScalaTest features via command line arguments described below. If you just want
to run a suite of tests from the command line and see results on the standard output, you may prefer to use ScalaTest's simple runner.
The basic form of a Runner
invocation is:
$ CLASSPATH=scalatest-app_3-3.2.19.jar:scala-xml_3-2.1.0.jar
$ scala -cp $CLASSPATH org.scalatest.tools.Runner [arguments]
The arguments Runner
accepts are described in the following table:
argument | description | example |
-Dkey=value | defines a key/value pair for the config map | -DmaxConnections=100 |
-R <runpath elements> | the specifies the runpath from which tests classes will be discovered and loaded (Note: only one -R allowed) | Unix: -R target/classes:target/generated/classes Windows: -R target\classes;target\generated\classes |
-n <tag name> | specifies a tag to include (Note: only one tag name allowed per -n ) | -n UnitTests -n FastTests |
-l <tag name> | specifies a tag to exclude (Note: only one tag name allowed per -l ) | -l SlowTests -l PerfTests |
-P[S][integer thread count] | specifies a parallel run, with optional suite sorting and thread count (Note: only one -P allowed) | -P , -PS , -PS 8 , or -P8 |
-s <suite class name> | specifies a suite class to run | -s com.company.project.StackSpec |
-m <members-only package> | requests that suites that are direct members of the specified package be discovered and run | -m com.company.project |
-w <wildcard package> | requests that suites that are members of the specified package or its subpackages be discovered and run | -w com.company.project |
-q <suffixes> | specify suffixes to discover | -q Spec -q Suite |
-Q | discover only classes whose names end with Spec or Suite (or other suffixes specified by -q ) | -Q |
-j <JUnit class name> | instantiate and run a JUnit 4 test class | -j StackTestClass |
-b <TestNG XML file> | run TestNG tests using the specified TestNG XML file | -b testng.xml |
-F <span scale factor> | a factor by which to scale time spans (Note: only one -F is allowed) | -F 10 or -F 2.5 |
-T <sorting timeout> | specifies a integer timeout (in seconds) for sorting the events of parallel runs back into sequential order | -T 5 |
-y <chosen styles> | specifies chosen styles for your project | -y org.scalatest.flatspec.AnyFlatSpec |
-i <suite ID> | specifies a suite to run by ID (Note: must follow -s , and is intended to be used primarily by tools such as IDEs.) | -i com.company.project.FileSpec-file1.txt |
-t <test name> | select the test with the specified name | -t "An empty Stack should complain when popped" |
-z <test name substring> | select tests whose names include the specified substring | -z "popped" |
-g[NCXEHLOPQMD] | select the graphical reporter | -g |
-f[NCXEHLOPQMDWSFU] <filename> | select the file reporter | -f output.txt |
-u <directory name> | select the JUnit XML reporter, specifying the output directory | -u target/junitxmldir |
-h <directory name> [-Y <css file name>] | select the HTML reporter, specifying the output directory and optionally including a specified CSS file | -h target/htmldir -Y src/main/html/customStyles.css |
-v | print the ScalaTest version | -v or, also -version |
-o[NCXEHLOPQMDWSFU] | select the standard output reporter | -o |
-e[NCXEHLOPQMDWSFU] | select the standard error reporter | -e |
-C[NCXEHLOPQMD] <reporter class> | select a custom reporter | -C com.company.project.BarReporter |
-M <file name> | memorize failed and canceled tests in a file, so they can be rerun with -A (again) | -M rerun.txt |
-A <file name> | used in conjunction with -M (momento) to select previously failed and canceled tests to rerun again | -A rerun.txt |
-S <generator seed> | defines seed used by generator. |
The simplest way to start Runner
is to specify the directory containing your compiled tests as the sole element of the runpath, for example:
scala -cp $CLASSPATH org.scalatest.tools.Runner -R compiled_tests
Given the previous command, Runner
will discover and execute all Suite
s in the compiled_tests
directory and its subdirectories,
and show results in graphical user interface (GUI).
Executing suites
Each -s
argument must be followed by one and only one fully qualified class name. The class must either extend Suite
and
have a public, no-arg constructor, or be annotated by a valid WrapWith
annotation.
Specifying the config map
A config map contains pairs consisting of a string key and a value that may be of any type. (Keys that start with
"org.scalatest." are reserved for ScalaTest. Configuration values that are themselves strings may be specified on the
Runner
command line.
Each configuration pair is denoted with a "-D", followed immediately by the key string, an "=", and the value string.
For example:
-Ddbname=testdb -Dserver=192.168.1.188
Specifying a runpath
A runpath is the list of filenames, directory paths, and/or URLs that Runner
uses to load classes for the running test. If runpath is specified, Runner
creates
a custom class loader to load classes available on the runpath.
The graphical user interface reloads the test classes anew for each run
by creating and using a new instance of the custom class loader for each run.
The classes that comprise the test may also be made available on
the classpath, in which case no runpath need be specified.
The runpath is specified with the -R option. The -R must be followed by a space,
a double quote ("
), a white-space-separated list of
paths and URLs, and a double quote. If specifying only one element in the runpath, you can leave off
the double quotes, which only serve to combine a white-space separated list of strings into one
command line argument. If you have path elements that themselves have a space in them, you must
place a backslash (\) in front of the space. Here's an example:
-R "serviceuitest-1.1beta4.jar myjini http://myhost:9998/myfile.jar target/class\ files"
Specifying reporters
Reporters can be specified on the command line in any of the following
ways:
-
-g[configs...]
- causes display of a graphical user interface that allows
tests to be run and results to be investigated -
-f[configs...] <filename>
- causes test results to be written to
the named file -
-u <directory>
- causes test results to be written to
junit-style xml files in the named directory -
-h <directory> [-Y <CSS file>]
- causes test results to be written to
HTML files in the named directory, optionally included the specified CSS file -
-a <number of files to archive>
- causes specified number of old
summary and durations files to be archived (in summaries/ and durations/ subdirectories)
for dashboard reporter (default is two) -
-o[configs...]
- causes test results to be written to
the standard output -
-e[configs...]
- causes test results to be written to
the standard error -
-k <host> <port>
- causes test results to be written to
socket in the named host and port number, using XML format -
-K <host> <port>
- causes test results to be written to
socket in the named host and port number, using Java object binary format -
-C[configs...] <reporterclass>
- causes test results to be reported to
an instance of the specified fully qualified Reporter
class name
The [configs...]
parameter, which is used to configure reporters, is described in the next section.
The -C
option causes the reporter specified in
<reporterclass>
to be
instantiated.
Each reporter class specified with a -C option must be public, implement
org.scalatest.Reporter
, and have a public no-arg constructor.
Reporter classes must be specified with fully qualified names.
The specified reporter classes may be
deployed on the classpath. If a runpath is specified with the
-R
option, the specified reporter classes may also be loaded from the runpath.
All specified reporter classes will be loaded and instantiated via their no-arg constructor.
For example, to run a suite named MySuite
from the mydir
directory
using two reporters, the graphical reporter and a file reporter
writing to a file named "test.out"
, you would type:
$ scala -cp $CLASSPATH org.scalatest.tools.Runner -R mydir -g -f test.out -s MySuite
The -g
, -o
, or -e
options can
appear at most once each in any single command line.
Multiple appearances of -f
and -C
result in multiple reporters
unless the specified <filename>
or <reporterclass>
is
repeated. If any of -g
, -o
, -e
,
<filename>
or <reporterclass>
are repeated on
the command line, the Runner
will print an error message and not run the tests.
Runner
adds the reporters specified on the command line to a dispatch reporter,
which will dispatch each method invocation to each contained reporter. Runner
will pass
the dispatch reporter to executed suites. As a result, every
specified reporter will receive every report generated by the running suite of tests.
If no reporters are specified, a graphical
runner will be displayed that provides a graphical report of
executed suites.
Configuring reporters
Each reporter option on the command line can include configuration characters. Configuration characters
are specified immediately following the -g
, -o
,
-e
, -f
, or -C
. The following configuration
characters, which cause reports to be dropped, are valid for any reporter:
-
N
- drop TestStarting
events -
C
- drop TestSucceeded
events -
X
- drop TestIgnored
events -
E
- drop TestPending
events -
H
- drop SuiteStarting
events -
L
- drop SuiteCompleted
events -
O
- drop InfoProvided
events -
P
- drop ScopeOpened
events -
Q
- drop ScopeClosed
events -
R
- drop ScopePending
events -
M
- drop MarkupProvided
events
A dropped event will not be delivered to the reporter at all. So the reporter will not know about it and therefore not
present information about the event in its report. For example, if you specify -oN
, the standard output reporter
will never receive any TestStarting
events and will therefore never report them. The purpose of these
configuration parameters is to allow users to selectively remove events they find add clutter to the report without
providing essential information.
The following three reporter configuration parameters may additionally be used on standard output (-o), standard error (-e),
and file (-f) reporters:
-
W
- without color -
D
- show all durations -
S
- show short stack traces -
F
- show full stack traces -
U
- unformatted mode -
I
- show reminder of failed and canceled tests without stack traces -
T
- show reminder of failed and canceled tests with short stack traces -
G
- show reminder of failed and canceled tests with full stack traces -
K
- exclude TestCanceled
events from reminder
If you specify a W, D, S, F, U, R, T, G, or K for any reporter other than standard output, standard error, or file reporters, Runner
will complain with an error message and not perform the run.
Configuring a standard output, error, or file reporter with D
will cause that reporter to
print a duration for each test and suite. When running in the default mode, a duration will only be printed for
the entire run.
Configuring a standard output, error, or file reporter with F
will cause that reporter to print full stack traces for all exceptions,
including TestFailedExceptions
. Every TestFailedException
contains a stack depth of the
line of test code that failed so that users won't need to search through a stack trace to find it. When running in the default,
mode, these reporters will only show full stack traces when other exceptions are thrown, such as an exception thrown
by production code. When a TestFailedException
is thrown in default mode, only the source filename and
line number of the line of test code that caused the test to fail are printed along with the error message, not the full stack
trace.
The 'U' unformatted configuration removes some formatting from the output and adds verbosity.
The purpose of unformatted (or, "ugly") mode is to facilitate debugging of parallel runs. If you have
tests that fail or hang during parallel runs, but succeed when run sequentially, unformatted mode can help.
In unformatted mode, you can see exactly what is happening when it is happening. Rather than attempting to make the output
look as pretty and human-readable as possible, unformatted mode will just print out verbose information about each event
as it arrives, helping you track down the problem
you are trying to debug.
By default, a standard output, error, or file reporter inserts ansi escape codes into the output printed to change and later reset
terminal colors. Information printed as a result of run starting, completed, and stopped events
is printed in cyan. Information printed as a result of ignored or pending test events is shown in yellow. Information printed
as a result of test failed, suite aborted, or run aborted events is printed in red. All other information is printed in green.
The purpose of these colors is to facilitate speedy reading of the output, especially the finding of failed tests, which can
get lost in a sea of passing tests. Configuring a standard output, error, or file reporter into without-color mode (W
) will
turn off this behavior. No ansi codes will be inserted.
The R
, T
, and G
options enable "reminders" of failed and, optionally, canceled tests to be printed
at the end of the summary. This minimizes or eliminates the need to search and scroll backwards to find out what tests failed or were canceled.
For large test suites, the actual failure message could have scrolled off the top of the buffer, making it otherwise impossible
to see what failed. You can configure the detail level of the stack trace for regular reports of failed and canceled tests independently
from that of reminders. To set the detail level for regular reports, use S
for short stack traces, F
for
full stack traces, or nothing for the default of no stack trace. To set the detail level for reminder reports, use T
for
reminders with short stack traces, G
for reminders with full stack traces in reminders, or R
for reminders
with no stack traces. If you wish to exclude reminders of canceled tests, i.e., only see reminders of failed tests, specify
K
along with one of R
, T
, or G
, as in "-oRK"
.
For example, to run a suite using two reporters, the graphical reporter configured to present every reported event
and a standard error reporter configured to present everything but test starting, test succeeded, test ignored, test
pending, suite starting, suite completed, and info provided events, you would type:
scala -classpath scalatest-<version>.jar -R mydir -g -eNDXEHLO -s MySuite
Note that no white space is allowed between the reporter option and the initial configuration
parameters. So "-e NDXEHLO"
will not work,
"-eNDXEHLO"
will work.
Specifying tags to include and exclude
You can specify tag names of tests to include or exclude from a run. To specify tags to include,
use -n
followed by a white-space-separated list of tag names to include, surrounded by
double quotes. (The double quotes are not needed if specifying just one tag.) Similarly, to specify tags
to exclude, use -l
followed by a white-space-separated
list of tag names to exclude, surrounded by double quotes. (As before, the double quotes are not needed
if specifying just one tag.) If tags to include is not specified, then all tests
except those mentioned in the tags to exclude (and in the org.scalatest.Ignore
tag), will be executed.
(In other words, the absence of a -n
option is like a wildcard, indicating all tests be included.)
If tags to include is specified, then only those tests whose tags are mentioned in the argument following -n
and not mentioned in the tags to exclude, will be executed. For more information on test tags, see
the documentation for Suite
. Here are some examples:
-n CheckinTests
-n FunctionalTests -l org.scalatest.tags.Slow
-n "CheckinTests FunctionalTests" -l "org.scalatest.tags.Slow org.scalatest.tags.Network")'
Specifying suffixes to discover
You can specify suffixes of Suite
names to discover. To specify suffixes to discover,
use -q
followed by a vertical-bar-separated list of suffixes to discover, surrounded by
double quotes. (The double quotes are not needed if specifying just one suffix.) Or you can specify
them individually using multiple -q's.
If suffixes to discover is not specified, then all suffixes are considered.
If suffixes is specified, then only those Suites whose class names end in one of the specified suffixes
will be considered during discovery. Here are some examples:
-q Spec
-q "Spec|Suite"
-q Spec -q Suite
Option -Q can be used to specify a default set of suffixes "Spec|Suite". If you specify both -Q and -q, you'll get Spec
and Suite in addition to the other suffix or suffixes you specify with -q.
Specifying suffixes can speed up the discovery process because class files with names not ending the specified suffixes
can be immediately disqualified, without needing to load and inspect them to see if they either extend Suite
and declare a public, no-arg constructor, or are annotated with WrapWith
.
Executing Suite
s in parallel
With the proliferation of multi-core architectures, and the often parallelizable nature of tests, it is useful to be able to run
tests in parallel. If you include -P
on the command line, Runner
will pass a Distributor
to
the Suite
s you specify with -s
. Runner
will set up a thread pool to execute any Suite
s
passed to the Distributor
's put
method in parallel. Trait Suite
's implementation of
runNestedSuites
will place any nested Suite
s into this Distributor
. Thus, if you have a Suite
of tests that must be executed sequentially, you should override runNestedSuites
as described in the documentation for Distributor
.
The -P
option may optionally be appended with a number (e.g.
"-P10
" -- no intervening space) to specify the number of
threads to be created in the thread pool. If no number (or 0) is
specified, the number of threads will be decided based on the number of
processors available.
Specifying Suite
s
Suites are specified on the command line with a -s followed by the fully qualified
name of a Suite
subclass, as in:
-s com.artima.serviceuitest.ServiceUITestkit
Each specified suite class must be public, a subclass of
org.scalatest.Suite
, and contain a public no-arg constructor.
Suite
classes must be specified with fully qualified names.
The specified Suite
classes may be
loaded from the classpath. If a runpath is specified with the
-R
option, specified Suite
classes may also be loaded from the runpath.
All specified Suite
classes will be loaded and instantiated via their no-arg constructor.
The runner will invoke execute
on each instantiated org.scalatest.Suite
,
passing in the dispatch reporter to each execute
method.
Runner
is intended to be used from the command line. It is included in org.scalatest
package as a convenience for the user. If this package is incorporated into tools, such as IDEs, which take
over the role of runner, object org.scalatest.tools.Runner
may be excluded from that implementation of the package.
All other public types declared in package org.scalatest.tools.Runner
should be included in any such usage, however,
so client software can count on them being available.
Specifying "members-only" and "wildcard" Suite
paths
If you specify Suite
path names with -m
or -w
, Runner
will automatically
discover and execute accessible Suite
s in the runpath that are either a member of (in the case of -m
)
or enclosed by (in the case of -w
) the specified path. As used in this context, a path is a portion of a fully qualified name.
For example, the fully qualifed name com.example.webapp.MySuite
contains paths com
, com.example
, and com.example.webapp
.
The fully qualifed name com.example.webapp.MyObject.NestedSuite
contains paths com
, com.example
,
com.example.webapp
, and com.example.webapp.MyObject
.
An accessible Suite
is a public class that extends org.scalatest.Suite
and defines a public no-arg constructor. Note that Suite
s defined inside classes and traits do not have no-arg constructors,
and therefore won't be discovered. Suite
s defined inside singleton objects, however, do get a no-arg constructor by default, thus
they can be discovered.
For example, if you specify -m com.example.webapp
on the command line, and you've placed com.example.webapp.RedSuite
and com.example.webapp.BlueSuite
on the runpath, then Runner
will instantiate and execute both of those Suite
s. The difference
between -m
and -w
is that for -m
, only Suite
s that are direct members of the named path
will be discovered. For -w
, any Suite
s whose fully qualified
name begins with the specified path will be discovered. Thus, if com.example.webapp.controllers.GreenSuite
exists on the runpath, invoking Runner
with -w com.example.webapp
will cause GreenSuite
to be discovered, because its fully qualifed name begins with "com.example.webapp"
. But if you invoke Runner
with -m com.example.webapp
, GreenSuite
will not be discovered because it is directly
a member of com.example.webapp.controllers
, not com.example.webapp
.
If you specify no -s
, -m
, or -w
arguments on the command line to Runner
, it will discover and execute all accessible Suite
s
in the runpath.
Specifying chosen styles
You can optionally specify chosen styles for a ScalaTest run. ScalaTest supports different styles of
testing so that different teams can use the style or styles that best suits their situation and culture. But
in any one project, it is recommended you decide on one main style for unit testing, and
consistently use only that style for unit testing throughout the project. If you also have integration
tests in your project, you may wish to pick a different style for them than you are using for unit testing.
You may want to allow certain styles to be used in special testing situations on a project, but in general,
it is best to minimize the styles used in any given project to a few, or one.
To facilitate the communication and enforcement of a team's style choices for a project, you can
specify the chosen styles in your project build. If chosen styles is defined, ScalaTest style traits that are
not among the chosen list will abort with a message complaining that the style trait is not one of the
chosen styles. The style name for each ScalaTest style trait is its fully qualified name. For example,
to specify that org.scalatest.funspec.AnyFunSpec
as your chosen style you'd pass this to
Runner
:
-y org.scalatest.funspec.AnyFunSpec
If you wanted org.scalatest.funspec.AnyFunSpec
as your main unit testing style, but also wanted to
allow AnyPropSpec
for test matrixes and AnyFeatureSpec
for
integration tests, you would write:
-y org.scalatest.funspec.AnyFunSpec -y org.scalatest.propspec.AnyPropSpec -y org.scalatest.featurespec.AnyFeatureSpec
To select org.scalatest.flatspec.AnyFlatSpec
as your main unit testing style, but allow
org.scalatest.fixture.AnyFlatSpec
for multi-threaded unit tests, you'd write:
-y org.scalatest.flatspec.AnyFlatSpec -y org.scalatest.fixture.AnyFlatSpec
The style name for a suite is obtained by invoking its styleName
method. Custom style
traits can override this method so that a custom style can participate in the chosen styles list.
Because ScalaTest is so customizable, a determined programmer could circumvent
the chosen styles check, but in practice -y
should be persuasive enough tool
to keep most team members in line.
Selecting suites and tests
Runner
accepts three arguments that facilitate selecting suites and tests: -i
, -t
, and -z.
The -i
option enables a suite to be selected by suite ID. This argument is intended to allow tools such as IDEs or build tools to
rerun specific tests or suites from information included in the results of a previous run. A -i
must follow a -s
that specifies a class with a public, no-arg constructor. The -i
parameter can be used, for example, to rerun a nested suite that
declares no zero-arg constructor, which was created by containing suite that does declare a no-arg constructor. In this case, -s
would be
used to specify the class ScalaTest can instantiate directly, the containing suite that has a public, no-arg constructor, and -i
would be
used to select the desired nested suite. One important use case for -i
is to enable such a nested suite that aborted during the previous run
to be rerun.
The -t
argument allows a test to be selected by its (complete) test name. Like -i
, the -t
argument is primarily intented
to be used by tools such as IDEs or build tools, to rerun selected tests based on information obtained from the results of a previous run.
For example, -t
could be used to rerun a test that failed in the previous run.
The -t
argument can be used directly by users, but because descriptive test names are usually rather long, the -z
argument (described next), will
usually be a more practical choice for users. If a -t
follows either -s
or -i
, then it only applies to the suite
identified. If it is specified independent of a -s
or -i
, then discovery is performed to find all Suites containing the test name.
The -z
option allows tests to be selected by a simplified wildcard: any test whose name includes the substring specified after -z
will be selected. For example, -z popped
would select tests named "An empty stack should complain when popped"
and "A non-empty stack
should return the last-pushed value when popped
, but not "An empty stack should be empty"
. In short, -z popped
would select any
tests whose name includes the substring "popped"
, and not select any tests whose names don't include "popped"
. This simplified
approach to test name wildcards, which was suggested by Mathias Doenitz, works around the difficulty of finding an actual wildcard character that will work
reliably on different operating systems. Like -t
, if -z
follows -s
or -i
, then it only applies to the Suite specified. Otherwise discovery is performed to find all Suites containing test names that include the substring.
Specifying a span scale factor
If you specify a integer or floating point span scale factor with -F
, trait ScaledTimeSpans
trait will return the specified value from its implementation of spanScaleFactor
. This allows you to tune the "patience" of a run (how long to wait
for asynchronous operations) from the command line. For more information, see the documentation for trait ScaledTimeSpans
.
Specifying TestNG XML config file paths
If you specify one or more file paths with -b
(b for Beust, the last name of TestNG's creator), Runner
will create a org.scalatest.testng.TestNGWrapperSuite
,
passing in a List
of the specified paths. When executed, the TestNGWrapperSuite
will create one TestNG
instance
and pass each specified file path to it for running. If you include -b
arguments, you must include TestNG's and ScalaTest + TestNG's jar file on the class path or runpath.
The -b
argument will enable you to run existing TestNG
tests, including tests written in Java, as part of a ScalaTest run.
You need not use -b
to run suites written in Scala that extend TestNGSuite
. You can simply run such suites with
-s
, -m
, or -w parameters.
Specifying JUnit 4 tests
JUnit 4 tests, including ones written in Java, may be run by specifying
-j classname
, where the classname is a valid JUnit 4 class
such as a TestCase, TestSuite, or a class implementing a static suite()
method returning a TestSuite.
To use this option you must include a JUnit 4's and ScalaTest + JUnit 4's jar file on your classpath.
Memorizing and rerunning failed and canceled tests
You can memorize failed and canceled tests using -M
:
-M failed-canceled.txt
All failed and canceled tests will be memorized in failed-canceled.txt
, to rerun them again, you use -A
:
-A failed-canceled.txt
Setting seed for generator
You can setting seed used by generator tests using -S
:
-S 1234567890
Generators in property-driven tests will then use the specified seed to reproduce your test failure.