# Testing with Bats

## Overview

The Bash-it unit tests leverage the [Bats unit test framework for Bash](https://github.com/bats-core/bats-core).
There is no need to install Bats explicitly, the test run script will automatically download and install Bats and its dependencies.

When making changes to Bash-it, the tests are automatically executed in a test build environment on [Travis CI](https://travis-ci.com).

## Test Execution

To execute the unit tests, please run the `run` script:

```bash
# If you are in the `test` directory:
./run

# If you are in the root `.bash_it` directory:
test/run
```

The `run` script will automatically install if it is not already present, and will then run all tests found under the `test` directory, including subdirectories.

To run only a subset of the tests, you can provide the name of the test subdirectory that you want to run, e.g. like this for the tests in the `test/themes` directory:

```bash
# If you are in the root `.bash_it` directory:
test/run test/themes
```

By default, the tests run in single-threaded mode.
If you want to speed up the test execution, you can install the [GNU `parallel` tool](https://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/), which is supported by Bats.
When using `parallel`, the `test/run` script will use a number of threads in parallel, depending on the available CPU cores of your system.
This can speed up test execution significantly.

## Writing Tests

When adding or modifying tests, please stick to the format and conventions of the existing test cases.
The `test_helper.bash` script provides a couple of reusable helper functions that you should use when writing a test case,
for example for setting up an isolated test environment.
