Debugging kaocha tests or deftest in general? - clojure

Question

Here is a small part about debugging in kaocha: https://cljdoc.org/d/lambdaisland/kaocha/1.69.1069/doc/8-plugins, which i do not understand.
Is there a way to debug kaocha tests or at least a way to execute a test directly from the REPL, so that i can debug the test?

Answer 1

Don't know about kaocha, but deftest macro just generates ordinary function by the test name passed to it in the test namespace:
(require '[clojure.test :as t])
(require '[clojure.walk :as w])
(w/macroexpand-all '(t/deftest a
(println "before test")
(t/is 1 1)
(println "after test")))
;;=> (def a (fn* ([] (clojure.test/test-var (var a)))))
so, you just call it from anywhere you want, just importing the test namespace:
user=> (ns my-tests)
nil
my-tests=> (require '[clojure.test :as t])
nil
my-tests=> (t/deftest some-test (let [x 101] (println "x is " x) (t/is x 101)))
#'my-tests/some-test
my-tests=> (in-ns 'user)
#object[clojure.lang.Namespace 0x4c98a6d5 "user"]
user=> (my-tests/some-test)
;;=> x is 101
nil

Answer 2

Not a direct answer, but I tried Kaocha & didn't like it as much as the original Leiningen driven tests, especially with the lein-test-refresh plugin. Besides running from the REPL as in the other answer, you can also run either all tests or only one test from the command line.
With the Test Refresh Plugin, the computer will watch your your source for any changes. Upon any editor save, the code will be reloaded & recompiled, then all modified tests will be re-run. The tests are typically completed before your finger has left the <enter> key.
You can see an example of using lein-test-refresh here. Below is an excerpt from the README:
Running Unit Tests with lein test-refresh
IMHO, the lein-test-refresh project provides the best way of doing iterative development in Clojure, re-running unit tests every time you save a source file from the editor.
> lein test-refresh
or make an alias:
alias lctr="lein do clean, test-refresh" # lctr => Lein Clean Test-Refresh
with result:
Testing _bootstrap
-------------------------------
Clojure 1.10.1 Java 13
-------------------------------
Testing tst.demo.core
result => "Hello, World!\n"
Ran 4 tests containing 6 assertions.
0 failures, 0 errors.
Passed all tests
Finished at 07:56:48.252 (run time: 6.709s)
in this instance, the test output pauses after printing the elapsed time, and waits to re-run upon any file change. For example, make a simple change in the namespace demo.core by adding the word "Again!" to the println expression, and watch as the tests are automatically re-run:
...
Testing tst.demo.core
result => "Hello, World! Again!\n"
...
Finished at 07:59:53.863 (run time: 0.034s)
Note that the tests were all re-run in only 34 milliseconds (nearly instantaneous), since the JVM was already started and Clojure itself (plus library code) has already been compiled.