Debugging

When a CLI test fails, you often want to step through the binary as it runs and inspect the fixture files it operated on. bintastic supports both.

BINTASTIC_DEBUG modes

Set BINTASTIC_DEBUG to enable the Node inspector and preserve fixtures for inspection instead of tearing them down:

BINTASTIC_DEBUG=attach npm test  # attach debugger
BINTASTIC_DEBUG=break npm test   # break on first line

attach runs the binary with --inspect so you can connect a debugger while it executes; break uses --inspect-brk to pause on the first line. In either mode the temp directory is left on disk and its path is logged so you can examine the fixtures after the run.

runBinDebug

To debug a single invocation without setting an environment variable for the whole run, call runBinDebug in place of runBin:

await runBinDebug('--flag'); // runs with --inspect

VS Code launch configuration

For VS Code, add the following to .vscode/launch.json so child processes spawned by the test runner are attached automatically:

{
  "name": "Debug Tests",
  "type": "node",
  "request": "launch",
  "runtimeExecutable": "${workspaceFolder}/node_modules/.bin/vitest",
  "runtimeArgs": ["run"],
  "autoAttachChildProcesses": true,
  "console": "integratedTerminal",
}