FAQ

• How are jlcoverage and jlcodestyle different than directly using the Coverage, CoverageTools, or JuliaFormatter packages?

  TestTools provides CLI tools that wrap functionality in the Julia packages that it depends on. Some trade-offs of using the TestTools CLI tools rather than directly calling package functions include:

  • Pros

    • Less typing when running from the shell
    • Combines useful sequences of package functions
    • Easier to set commonly used options
    • Shorter runtime (due to CLI-tuned compiler options)

  • Cons

    • Inconvenient to use from the Julia REPL
    • Does not cover all of the combinations of package functions
    • Does not cover all options available through package functions
    • Longer runtime (depends on compiler options used to start Julia REPL)

• What is the difference between jlcodestyle and JuliaFormatter's format.jl CLI tool?

  • Method for specifying style

    • jlcodestyle: style level – Blue vs YAS vs Default
    • format.jl: line level (e.g., number of spaces to use for indentation)

  • File overwriting behavior

    • jlcodestyle: by default, files are not overwritten. There is a command-line option enable file overwriting.

    • format.jl: always overwrites files

  • Performance

    • jlcodestyle: faster startup through the use of tuned Julia command-line options
    • format.jl: no command-line option tuning to reduce startup time