testing-best-practices.md

title	Testing Best Practices
inclusion	always

Testing Best Practices

Test Execution

• Always run tests with minimal verbosity to prevent session timeouts
• Use --silent or --quiet flags when available
• Filter tests with grep/pattern matching for focused testing
• Avoid running full test suites in automated contexts unless necessary

Common Test Commands

# NPM/Yarn - Use silent mode
npm test -- --silent
yarn test --silent

# Jest - Minimal output
npm test -- --verbose=false --silent
npx jest --silent --passWithNoTests

# Pytest - Quiet mode
pytest -q
python -m pytest --tb=short -q

# Mocha - Minimal reporter
npx mocha --reporter min

# Filtering specific tests
npm test -- --grep "specific test"
npx jest --testNamePattern="specific test"
pytest -k "test_specific"

Output Management

• Use summary reporters instead of verbose output
• Capture detailed logs only when tests fail
• Use --bail or --maxfail=1 to stop on first failure
• Redirect verbose output to files when needed: npm test > test-results.log 2>&1

Test Organization

• Group related tests to enable selective running
• Use test tags/categories for filtering
• Keep test names descriptive but concise
• Separate unit, integration, and e2e tests

Performance

• Run tests in parallel when possible (--parallel, --maxWorkers)
• Use test caching mechanisms
• Mock external dependencies to speed up tests
• Skip slow tests in development with appropriate flags

CI/CD Considerations

• Use different verbosity levels for local vs CI environments
• Capture test artifacts (coverage, reports) separately from console output
• Use test result formatters that work well with CI systems
• Consider splitting large test suites across multiple jobs