Allow use of --match and --skip from .hspec files

[RobMurray98]

Currently the only way to tell stack test which tests to skip or match is through the command line explicitly. I would like to see support of ability to do this through .hspec files.

[sol]

The reason --match and --skip don't work from .hspec is that .hspec only supports options that you reasonably want to use for all of your projects.

@RobMurray98 What is your current workflow and how do you intent to use this feature? Have you looked into --rerun and --failure-report (both of which can be specified in .hspec)?

[sol]

Also take a look at hspec/sensei.

[RobMurray98]

@sol I have one test that goes through all possible inputs and takes an hour or so, which obviously you don't want to run normally. hspec/sensei would definitely work for what I want by just putting the expensive test in a different testing file, so that's great. Can I ask what the reasoning behind not allowing --match and --skip in the project's directory level .hspec file is? It obviously makes sense that the home directory .hspec file doesn't allow it. Maybe the ability to specify the location of the specification file you want to use, as in hspec/sensei, could be added to hspec/hspec in some way?

[sol]

Hey, sorry for the late reply!

Can I ask what the reasoning behind not allowing --match and --skip in the project's directory level .hspec file is? It obviously makes sense that the home directory .hspec file doesn't allow it.

I'm not too eager to add even more corner cases. I guess I can be convinced to allow --match and --skip in .hspec, but it would be for both the global and the per project one.

My main concern is that at some point somebody will open an issue saying "some of my specs are never executed" and I'll have to guide them through "please check your environment variables", "please check .hspec", "please check ~/.hspec`...

But I may overzealously trying to protect users from them self. So again, I guess I can be convinced to lift the current restriction.

Maybe the ability to specify the location of the specification file you want to use, as in hspec/sensei, could be added to hspec/hspec in some way?

Not sure if I understand what you mean, but sensei allows you to specify the spec file on the command line.

Wanted to use --skip in .hspec file for a similar reason, instead got " hspec: unrecognized option `--skip' in config file" - took a while to figure out that it's an intentional design decision. Try printing warnings about tests disabled/enabled through config files/env variables?

[sol]

An other complication with this is that --match and --skip accept free-form arguments that may e.g. contain whitespace. This will require some sort of quoting. On the command-line the shell takes care of quoting.

For config files and environment variables we would need to implement quoting ourself, which poses the question of what exact quoting rules we would want to use.

[sol]

Because of the whitespace/quoting issues, I'm not eager to add support for --skip/--match to .hspec and HSPEC_OPTIONS.

However, starting with hspec-2.8.4 you can now set options by setting separate environment variables. So e.g. setting HSPEC_MATCH=... works now.

@RobMurray98 I hope this addresses you use case.