Issue running karma task from gulp

Question

I am trying to run karma tests from gulp task and I am getting this error:

Error: 1
   at formatError (C:\\Users\\Tim\\AppData\\Roaming\\npm\\node_modules\\g         


        

Answer 1

gulp.task('test', function(done) {
    karma.start({
        configFile: __dirname + '/karma.conf.js',
        singleRun: false 
    }, done);
});

passing singleRun: false argument will prevent the process from returning a value different of 0 (which would signify an error and exit gulp).

Run with singleRun: true if you only launching your test from a command line, not part of a continuous integration suite.

Answer 2

What worked for me and gave a nice formatted error message is to provide an Error instance to the done callback.

gulp.task('test', function(done) {
    karma.start({
        configFile: __dirname + '/karma.conf.js',
        singleRun: true
    }, function(result) {
        if (result > 0) {
            return done(new Error(`Karma exited with status code ${result}`));
        }

        done();
    });
});

Answer 3

Not sure about Ubuntu, but I was getting a similar error on Windows, and installing one version back fixed it right away like this:

npm install -g gulp@3.8.8
npm install gulp@3.8.8

Answer 4

How are you running your tests with Gulp? I came up against this issue recently on OSX, running node v0.11.14 and gulp 3.8.10, whenever there were failing tests.

Changing from the recommended:

gulp.task('test', function(done) {
    karma.start({
        configFile: __dirname + '/karma.conf.js',
        singleRun: true
    }, done);
});

To:

gulp.task('test', function(done) {
    karma.start({
        configFile: __dirname + '/karma.conf.js',
        singleRun: true
    }, function() {
        done();
    });
});

...got rid of this error.

Seems to be down to how gulp handles error messages when an error is signalled in a callback. See Improve error messages on exit for more information.