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Version: 1.x

Testing: Continuous Integration

Introduction​

Using Continuous Integration (CI) in your development can help ease your mind when adding new features to a site. This guide will help you setup your Mantle application or project that is using Mantle's testing framework for CI via GitHub Actions.

Are you transitioning an existing site to Mantle's Test Framework?

Be sure to checkout Transitioning to Test Framework using Mantle Testkit for more information.

Differences from Core Tests​

One difference to call out from core is that Mantle does not require the use of bin/install-wp-tests.sh to run tests in a CI environment. (If you don't know what that is, skip ahead!) Mantle will automatically attempt to download and install WordPress behind the scenes so that your plugin/package can focus on other things. For majority of the use cases plugins/packages will be able to run ./vendor/bin/phpunit and have their tests run automatically.

For more information, read more about the Installation Manager.

Environment Variables​

By default, no variables need to be set to run your tests. It is recommended to set the following variables before running:

  • CACHEDIR: /tmp/test-cache
  • WP_CORE_DIR: /tmp/wordpress

The CACHEDIR variable defines the location of the cache folder used for tests. If possible, cache that folder and use it across tests to improve performance. For tests using the Mantle installation script, WP_DEVELOP_DIR and WP_TESTS_DIR are unused and do not need to be defined.

For more environmental variables, see the Installation Manager.

Where can I find the Mantle version of the installation script?

The canonical version of the Mantle install-wp-tests.sh script is located here and can be referenced in tests via https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alleyinteractive/mantle-ci/HEAD/install-wp-tests.sh.

To manually install WordPress, run the following commands inside your integration test (specific examples for GitHub Actions can be found below):

# Testing: Install Composer
composer install

# Testing: Run PHPUnit/phpcs
composer test

An example test bootstrap file for a plugin can be found here.

Caching​

Caching can improve the performance of your tests by a great deal. Your tests should cache the dependencies installed using Composer and the remote files downloaded during testing (the CACHEDIR variable). The configurations included in this guide will use the recommended caching for testing.

The Mantle version of the install-wp-tests.sh script will also cache the WordPress installation and latest WordPress version for 24 hours.

Setting Up Continuous Integration​

GitHub Actions​

The Mantle repository includes GitHub Actions for testing your Mantle application against PHPUnit and phpcs: