Investigate instantiating new API and reporter in --watch

[novemberborn]

#502 resets the API and logger/reporter between runs. Creating fresh instances may be preferable. This would require some sort of code sharing between cli.js and watcher.js though, since the former sets up the instances and has access to the required CLI flags.

One option would be to pass a callback to watcher.start() allowing the watcher to create new API and logger/reporter instances, but leaving the definition in cli.js.

[novemberborn]

@jamestalmage given your refactoring work what's your take on this?

[jamestalmage]

I actually was thinking we could move watcher support into the API itself. That was kind of the thinking behind the test-run event. Also, in my refactor branch lib/ava-files could probably incorporate some of the file-path processing in watcher.js (I'm thinking methods like makeTestMatcher and buildChokidarPatterns, etc).

I'm thinking of adapting the run method a little:

// new testRun is returned immediately, it may not start receiving events until the current run finishes.

var testRun = api.run(files, {
  runOnlyExclusive: boolean,
  stopCurrentRun: boolean
});

testRun.on('test', ...)

testRun.result.then(function (result) {

});

[sindresorhus]

I like that idea. Ideally the CLI should just be a tiny wrapper around the API, with CLI only stuff.

[jamestalmage]

Ideally the CLI should just be a tiny wrapper around the API, with CLI only stuff.

Agreed. Our CLI is pretty huge. A lot of it is options processing (parsing the command line and merging with package.json). Part of the idea behind #700 is to reduce the amount of options processing API consumers would need to do.

[novemberborn]

I actually was thinking we could move watcher support into the API itself.

The watcher is fairly big though. I wonder if we could make the watcher instantiate its Api. We couldn't before due to how the loggers were coupled.

[jamestalmage]

I didn't mean "move all of watcher.js into api.js". Just expose a way to pass options {watch: true} to the API and receive test-run events as files change.

[novemberborn]

@jamestalmage that sound cool.

[novemberborn]

The lack of this refactor hasn't been an issue. Closing this, but I expect we'll do something like this eventually as needs dictate.