jest: Jest resolver does not follow symbolic links

I have the following tree:

.
├── app_modules
│   ├── actions
│   ├── components
│   ├── __tests__
│   ├── constants
│   ├── libs
│   ├── models
│   ├── shared -> ../../../../../js_lib/shared/
│   │   ├── components
│   │   │   └── __tests__
│   │   ├── libs
│   │   └── utils
│   └── utils
└── src
    └── main

When running npm test all tests inside the symbolic link shared are not executed by the client.

Thank you.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 8 years ago
Reactions: 4
Comments: 20 (8 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

Yeah, I’m working with a monorepo too, and lack of symlink support is a real pain.

+19

majelbstoat on May 22, 2018

I understand that you don’t like symlinks, however I don’t follow why you would block using them within the tool. Anyone that doesn’t want to use symlinks doesn’t have to, they just don’t create them, but for you to disallow symlinks within the test finder makes our setup very hard to work with, especially since all the other tools we use are completely happy with symlinks.

Our setup looks like

+- ProjectA
     +- node_modules
     +- shared(symlink)--+   
+- shared               <+ <+
+- ProjectB                 |
     +- node_modules        |
     +- shared(symlink)-----

All the code shared between the 2 projects is in the real shared folder and both projects use a symlink to place that folder into both projects.

ProjectA is the main website, ProjectB is the admin website, so the shared folder is used extensively by both projects. What I’ve shifted to is:

+- ProjectA
     +- node_modules
     +- shared(symlink)-----+   
+- ProjectB                 |
     +- node_modules        |
     +- shared         <----+

Which will work, but is less obvious than the original layout. All because one tool (jest) has decided that symlinks “always cause trouble”, something I would debate is false. So while it might be by design, does that design actually make sense in light of the rest of the toolchain which works just fine with symlinks?

+13

mark0978 on Sep 21, 2016

So, even though all the other tools work with symlinks, since you don’t like symlinks, its perfectly acceptable for jest to explicitly ignore symlinks? Is that what you are saying?

+12

mark0978 on Sep 22, 2016

https://github.com/facebook/jest/pull/7549

SimenB on Jan 9, 2019

After lots of experimenting and digging through docs, it appears one can use the roots configuration option to specify multiple directories, which are included when looking for __mocks__. This solves my problem wonderfully.

davesidious on May 17, 2018

no, I think it would make sense to support them overall. I think if you change the node crawler to support them behind a flag (that would disable watchman as well), I wouldn’t stop you from adding it to the codebase, granted it is well written and tested etc.

cpojer on Nov 8, 2016

Feel free to send us a pull request that fixes Jest to fit your use case. If it doesn’t make Jest harder to maintain and works within our constraints, I’m happy to accept it.

Personally, the only reason I get to work on Jest at Facebook is because I’m solving Facebook’s problems related to JavaScript testing. This is not a problem for us so I’m not able to justify working on it myself.

cpojer on Sep 22, 2016