Clear Terminal Screen When Running In Watch Mode

[ghost]

FEATURE

It would be nice to clear terminal screen while running in watch mode.

A Simple package like clear could be used.

WHY ?

It becomes very disturbing when running tests in watch mode and the terminal gets filled very quickly,
So you have to clear it manually.

[novemberborn]

The previous run is left visible since you may need to refer back to it while you're debugging test failures. Admittedly the larger the test suite the more confusing this gets. We do try to print a separator so you know where the previous run ended.

Most terminals have a shortcut for clearing the screen. I often use this, followed by typing r + Enter which reruns the tests for you.

We're open for suggestions on how to improve the separation between the test runs. Or perhaps we should have a "clear and rerun tests" command?

[ghost]

@novemberborn , Is there a way to run only the changed tests in watch mode so that all tests are not run again ?

This could make it comfortable on the console.

[novemberborn]

@clemtrek watch mode does that automatically when you modify files.

[ghost]

Thanks

[capttrousers]

Can we reopen this as a feature request? I'd like to have an opt in config to clear the screen between reruns in watch mode.

I took a look through the code, and could try a PR but I'm not quite clear on where this kind of behavior would go.

Nodemon has an "events" hook option where you can declare aribtrary terminal commands to run on events like start or restart, so I have this in my nodemon config:

    "events": {
      "start": "npm run clean && clear"
    }

The clean npm script cleans up some temp data like logs, so that'd be nice to get a similar start or rerun hook option for ava's watch mode, so I could run those clean and clear commands when running tests too.

[novemberborn]

@capttrousers I think the right approach is to improve the reporters, see #2500.