shell-tester

A little library to create automated tests for shell setups. When a test is run, it also generates a detailed output of the shell session, which can be used to create screenshots or videos of the test.

I use this library to test my dotfiles and generate example screenshots for my shell setup.

Example

example.js

const { ShellTester } = require('shell-tester')
const tester = new ShellTester({ shellCommand: 'sh' }) (1)

tester.session('example', async (s) => { (2)
  await s.expect('$') (3)
  await s.send('ls\r')
  await s.expect('package.json')
})

tester.run() (4)

1	Create a `ShellTester` and specify the shell command to use.
2	Register a test session using the `session` method.
3	Automate the shell using the provided `ShellSession` object.
4	Run the registered sessions by calling the `run` method.

For more detailed examples, see the test.js file.

Installation

This module is not versioned and is not published on npm. To install it directly from GitHub, run:

$ yarn add "dtinth/shell-tester#main"

To pin the dependency in your package.json file and prevent breaking changes from affecting your project, replace main with the SHA of the latest commit.

Running

The test script can be run directly using Node.js:

$ node example.js

Output file

This will generate a file called tmp/output/example_end.js in the current directory which contains the detailed output of the shell session.

A simple HTML viewer can be used to view the output:

$ echo "file://$PWD/node_modules/shell-tester/preview.html?data=../../tmp/output/example_end.js"

(Open the URL in your browser to see the output.)