Add an option to treat '_test.dart' files outside of './test' as tests

As a convention, we are keeping our test files next to our source files instead of in a separate test directory. Now, when we click “Run” above the test in VSCode, it fails:

Could not find an option named "name".

Run 'flutter -h' (or 'flutter <command> -h') for available flutter commands and options.
Exited (64)

You can reproduce this:

1. Create a new Flutter project
2. Add a new file lib/main_test.dart:

import 'package:flutter_test/flutter_test.dart';

void main() {
  test('test test', () {
    expect(123, 123);
  });
}

1. Click “Run” above test
2. Check Debug Console

Is there any way to get this working? If not, how do you recommend structuring the test directory? We have a very big project and we want to make sure we keep our code organized.

[DanTup]

Sorry for the delay… I was hoping to come up with something better, but haven’t so far.

I’m thinking the simplest way is a setting, something like dart.allowTestsOutsideTestFolder. When set to false (the default) it will assume that _test.dart scripts outside ./test are not tests (I think this is probably most common, though I have no data). When set to true, then _test.dart anywhere will be considered a test.

CodeLens would use this too, so you’d need to enable it to see codeLens for tests outside of ./test.

If it seems like many people are hitting this and unaware of the setting, we could do something basic like a regex over the file (if it ends with _test.dart) and if it looks like it might include tests, give the user a prompt asking which way they want (and persisting that setting so we don’t ask again).

You could set the setting in User Settings (if you do this a lot, it’ll apply to all projects), but also if you have an open source/shared project doing this, you could commit it in .vscode/settings.json so that anyone opening that project will have it for that window.

How does this sound?

[maxlapides]

I’m not sure what reason there is for having a file named _test.dart that is NOT a test file. It seems to me that it is a better assumption that ALL _test.dart files are test files. It would be easier for someone who named a non-test file _test.dart to rename that file than it will be for us to completely reorganize our project to relocate all test files to a /test directory.