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Comment by jkubicek | Hacker News Reader

I use fishshell, and I've gotten in the habit of creating a function called `t` to run tests. This function captures whatever test command I'm currently using. Just test one file, run one test case, use a debugger, capture coverage, etc. I don't save the function, so it doesn't persist across Terminal sessions. If I need to change how I'm running tests, I update the function.

It's a small, but noticeable improvement over the way I was working before, either up-arrowing until I found the last time I ran tests, or typing, `pytest...` and letting autocomplete figure out what I was doing previously.

edit: So yes, I am also a big fan of helping to enforce consistency by scripting even the small things.

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I wrote a small python script, that I alias in my shell to "b" (for build). When I run it in a given directory, it prompts me for a command, if it doesn't have one already saved. Subsequent runs just run the saved command, but it can save a different command for each folder. I use it to clear and remake my build directory using cmake on my c++ projects, with the various compile options saved in as well. It's basically a persistent version of what you describe.

Here's the script, if you're interested. It's not super complex. https://github.com/wheybags/stuff/blob/master/build-dir-comm...

Have a function similiar to this, reruns the last test command

  function retest
      set --local cmd (history | grep -v history | grep -Em1 "((bundle exec)?rspec|go test|jest)")
      echo "Rerunning `$cmd`"
      eval $cmd
  end

> either up-arrowing until I found the last time I ran tests

just as a substitute for up-arrowing, have you tried ctrl-r/reverse-i-search? (if that's a thing in fishshell)

edit: I see wodenokoto already mentioned this workflow in another comment

If you type before up arrowing this is what the up arrow does in fish

Check out FZF for fuzzy finding through your command history in this manner- it is absolutely the superior way to search command history

in fish you can type some of the command and arrow-up. It will show only commands containing that substring.

So does libreadline (and therefore bash). The following in ~/.inputrc does the trick for vi mode users:

k: history-search-backward j: history-search-forward

There is an equivalent for emacs mode.

Would you mind sharing a gist of that function?

I’m assuming they mean something like:

  t() {
    bazel test //some/specific/thing/...
    # or pytest, maven, sbt, etc etc
  }

Add in whatever option you want to the test command there. Then you just press “t” and it runs your tests.

Yeah, that's exactly it. There's barely anything to it, and it's trivial to recreate if I close the terminal window

Ahh cool. I thought you meant something a little more context aware. A great idea though!

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