[Question] Sharing context between specs: good or bad?

I chatted with @dgozman about this a bit here. https://github.com/playwright-community/jest-playwright/pull/96#issuecomment-608587152

I understand that in theory it makes sense to not share context, but the end result I’m seeing doesn’t seem ideal.

When I share context:

describe('editor/page', () => {
  it('can log in and create a site', async () => {});

  it('can create a page and add content', async () => {});

  it('can publish the site', async () => {});

  it('can delete the page', async () => {});
});

When I don’t share context:

describe('editor/page', () => {
  it('can create a site, add a page, add content, publish, and delete the page', async () => {
    // Create a site
    [some code here]

    // Create a page
    [some code here]

    // Add content
    [some code here]

    // Publish
    [some code here]

    // Delete the page
    [some code here]
  });
});

I find the code a bit easier to read in the first example, and the output in Jest looks a bit nicer too. Do you have any thoughts about how to achieve clearer code and output without sharing context?

Thanks!

[celeryclub]

I still haven’t come up with a great answer for this. For now what I’m doing is this:

1. Grouping all tests that depend on one another into one very large test with a long name
2. Logging individual actions so that developers can see the current status of the run and quickly identify problems

I don’t love this because I end up with very long test names in order to include everything that’s happening in the test, and the test output doesn’t contain any grouping of related actions. That being said though, I don’t have a better idea for how to fix this at the moment. I think some type of test group support would be great for this, but that’s a lot of work and I’m not sure this is an area of focus for you.

Up to you whether you’d like to keep this open based on if this is an area of interest to the team. Thanks for checking in!

[celeryclub]

Fair point @dgozman. I think the name isn’t a huge issue. But some kind of step delineator would be really nice.