Terminal surfaces

Nothing about your habits changes. You type elide test the way you always have; in a Tern terminal the results draw as a view instead of scrolling past as lines. Five commands behave this way, and none of them needs the plugin. The plugin’s part is to open the elide:// links the views carry (see Links).

Outside Tern every command prints as it does in any terminal. Scripts and other tools see the same text they always did: a pipe or a redirect, a non-terminal stdin or TERM=dumb is enough to get it. -p counts as --project, and -- on elide test keeps plain output too.

Inline and page surfaces

elide test and elide build draw inline by default: the view sits in the pane’s output, and when the command ends it stays in scrollback like printed text. A page takes the whole pane until you quit it.

The flag wins over the variable. A flag value other than inline, screen or auto is an error. A variable naming no mode makes the run use auto; elide test also prints one warning on stderr:

elide: ELIDE_TERN_SURFACE='full' names no surface mode (expected inline, screen or auto); using auto

A Tern without inline surfaces gets the page. Outside Tern, and on any run that keeps the plain output, --surface is accepted and has no effect, so scripts can always pass it. An inline view closes when its run finishes and the command returns; the keys below act on the pages.

elide test in Tern

Plain text:

Inline:

Project Tests page in the workspace:

elide test exits nonzero when the last run failed, and 130 when a run is cancelled or interrupted before it finishes. Test files and failure locations inside a project link to the source editor.

Tests run with the same flags as a plain run: --coverage, -t, --where and the other elide test flags pass through. Each run saves its TAP report and runner log under .dev/reports/tests/tern/ in the project, or in the test file’s directory outside one.

elide build in Tern

Plain text:

Inline:

Build page from the workspace:

x cancels a running build; q, Esc and Ctrl+D close the page once the build has finished. elide build exits with the build’s own status, and 130 when it is cancelled or interrupted. Each run writes its diagnostics report, which the source editor and status bar read; see Build diagnostics.

elide help in Tern

Plain text:

Help page:

elide help TOPIC opens at that topic; elide help options and the other command-line topics print text. Under 80 columns the page stacks the search field, the page and the navigation. Keys and search: help. Links between help pages are elide://help?topic=<slug> URLs; through the plugin they open in a new pane beside the one you clicked in.

elide serve in Tern

A directory is served as static files; a script runs with its fetch handler, and elide dev on a script opens the same page. The Logs tab appears with the first log line and the Traces tab once a request is captured; see Traces.

elide repl in Tern

Clear sends /clear. The REPL’s commands work inline and in the notebook. The notebook is described under REPL notebook.

Next

The views so far live in whatever terminal you typed in. The project workspace gives a project its own tab, with a toolbar that opens these same pages and test runs that every view shares.

See also

• elide test, elide build, elide help