Support nested isolation mode per describe

[maxime1992]

Hello, I'm just getting started with Kotest and Kotlin in general.

I struggled with a test recently because I misunderstood how IsolationMode works. I thought I could do something like this

class SomeTest : DescribeSpec({
  // default isolation mode: same for all the tests in the class
  // we can make expensive setup here like booting a docker container

  describe("Describe 1") {
    isolationMode = IsolationMode.InstancePerLeaf

    // some cheap setup that we can clear for each test *of the current scope, the current describe*
    // and variables that should be independant per test for the current describe

    it("Test 1") { ... }

    it("Test 2") { ... }
  }
}

Except that with the above example, there's no errors but the isolation mode per leaf is not applied. Which means I had my tests running but the variables defined in the describe where not independant. It was particularly confusing as I ran my tests one by one as I was writing them, and at the end when I try to run them all at once, it failed.

I think it'd be nice to be able to describe the isolation mode per describe instead of per class.

It wouldn't even be a breaking change as currently it only supports isolation mode to be set at the top, not in nested describe.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[maxime1992]

Up

[almozavr]

It would be incredibly cool to change isolation mode per container to e.g. share container state across the inner tests

[sksamuel]

This would be neat but I fear the implementation would be very complex. It's already tricky enough to support the three isolation modes just at the top level.

[sksamuel]

Going to close because implementation of this is too complicated with edgecases.