Instruct how to properly debug and test the application

[plamber]

Hi guys,
I was wondering if there is some documentation that explains command developers how to debug and test the CLI during development (using breakpoints etc.)?

Thank you,
Patrick

[waldekmastykarz]

Good question and I think that's an area we could improve.

With the number of commands we have, we have plenty of examples, so typically when building commands myself, I use another command as a starting point and adjust it where necessary. As for debugging, logging output to console is sufficient for me. That said, I don't think I'm any way representative for the bigger community out there, so if you have any suggestions how we could improve it, I'd love to hear them.

@pnp/office-365-cli-maintainers do you have specific way of working on the CLI that could contribute to @plamber's question?

[garrytrinder]

I think this is something that we will find that varies from person to person, as we all work in different ways, however I do seem to take the same approach as @waldekmastykarz does.

One tip that we could add is updating the test script in the package.json to only run a single test spec rather than the whole suite during development, not sure if that is documented anywhere.

What approach do you take @plamber ? Do you use VSCode Debug mode and its breakpoints?

[plamber]

Hi, i am using your approaches. Also the one for changing the package.json.

I havent found the way to use breakpoints while testing thecommands. Maybe you know how to do it

[VelinGeorgiev]

I think I stopped debugging via IDE like 5 years ago :) I was very spoiled from Visual Studio that time, but realized that I understand the code better if I do not use breakpoints. Now it is simple console log for myself as well, where I really want to see output. There has to be a way to do that in Visual Studio Code, and I think some folks from the contributors already have launch file, but I do not remember who had it.

[plamber]

@VelinGeorgiev I am a lazy developer that sometimes needs some luxury... we are no more in assembly development times :)

As far as I can see here, we are all somehow aligned.

Was hoping for some "special tricks"

[waldekmastykarz]

One tip that we could add is updating the test script in the package.json to only run a single test spec rather than the whole suite during development, not sure if that is documented anywhere.

Rather than updating package.json you can add .only to either the specific test, so it.only(... or to the whole suite describe.only(.... It's not as quick as updating the glob, which will parse only the specific file, but it's easier to run just one test or suite. You can of course use both approaches 😎

[VelinGeorgiev]

Here is it: https://github.com/pnp/office365-cli/blob/master/docs/guides/adding-command.md#implement-unit-tests

Someone from the community added this piece of documentation on how to debug unit tests.

This is at least some start