Nx: Create Workspace with Angular defaults to Jest for testing

[Sharondio]

Expected Behavior

When generating an angular app via nx-cli, either as part of an initial workspace setup, or to add to an existing ng-cli generated workspace, I expect to get all of the angular options, such as configure routing, and which testing framework to use.

Current Behavior

When generating a new nx workspace, and choose either the angular or the angular + nest options to pre-populate an application, the nx-cli no longer asks the user which testing framework to use. It also does not ask about configuring routing.

Additionally, when adding an app to an nx-cli generated workspace, same issue. It defaults to jest, but does ask to configure routing.

Creating an empty workspace, but using nx-cli, and then adding an angular app = same result.
Creating an empty workspace, but using angular-cli to run it, and then adding an angular app works as expected.

Note: It did previously ask for the testing option before I upgraded nx-cli. I do not recall exactly what version I was running before upgrading.

Failure Information (for bugs)

Please help provide information about the failure if this is a bug. If it is not a bug, please remove the rest of this template.

Steps to Reproduce

Please provide detailed steps for reproducing the issue.

1. Create nx workspace: npx create-nx-workspace@latest my-app
2. When asked what to create in new workspace, choose either "angular" or "angular-nest"
3. Give application name
4. Choose stylesheet format
5. Notice no further options.

Context

Please provide any relevant information about your setup:

• version of Nx used: 8.4.4
• angular-cli version: 8.1.1
• node version: v10.16.0
• osX 10.14.6 Mojave

Failure Logs

No errors reported.

Other

Any other relevant information that will help us help you.

[kjbetz]

Per docs, you can pass the --unit-test-runner flag to specify which test runner you'd like to set up.

Using Karma

To use Karma instead of Jest, run ng g @nrwl/angular:application frontend --unit-test-runner=karma.

[Sharondio]

Hopefully that will work for adding an application to an existing nx-generated workspace. But what about when you're generating a workspace and initializing an app at that time? I'd still consider that a bug.

[jaysoo]

The thinking is that new workspaces will want to use Jest as the default, so there isn't an option when creating new workspaces.

@FrozenPandaz @vsavkin Any thoughts? We could prompt for this when creating an app.

[adgoncal]

In angular.json, I have the following section:

// ...
  "schematics": {
    "@nrwl/schematics:component": {
      "styleext": "scss"
    },
    "@nrwl/schematics:library": {
      "unitTestRunner": "karma",
      "framework": "angular"
    },
    "@nrwl/schematics:application": {
      "unitTestRunner": "karma",
      "e2eTestRunner": "protractor"
    },
    "@nrwl/schematics:node-application": {
      "framework": "express"
    }
  }
}

However, ng g lib still uses jest. Is there something wrong with my configuration? If not, what is the point of this configuration in angular.json if the schematics don't honor it?

EDIT:
So, it seems the above configuration is outdated. It should use @nrwl/angular instead of @nrwl/schematics. This fixes my issues.

[vsavkin]

@Sharondio the guideline we use is the following:

Using a non-empty preset should ask the min number of questions possible and create a workspace with "good" defaults. Presets are great for building POC and quickly putting together projects. For anything else you should start with "empty".

So if you want to have a custom angular setup, do the following:

npx create-nx-workspace myorg --preset=empty --cli=angular
ng add @nrwl/angular
ng g app myapp --unit-test-runner=karma

If you don't want to pass unit-test-runner every time you generate an app, add the following to your angular.json:

  "schematics": {
    "@nrwl/angular:application": {
      "unitTestRunner": "karma"
    }
  }
}

Does it make sense?

[Sharondio]

@vsavkin Yeah, it makes sense as a workaround, and that's ultimately what I did. But what is the difference between that approach and creating an angular-cli generated app and adding @nrwl/schematics after the fact (which also worked)?

I can accept the "good" defaults argument, but locking all future apps into the same defaults is a bit heavy-handed. I was even more confused when further apps generated in the workspace by the angular-cli defaulted to jest as well, as @adgonal mentioned above. At the very least, this could be made more clear in the documentation.

[vsavkin]

@Sharondio Agree about the docs. We should add a guide, maybe on configuring Karma and Protractor. If you would like to do it, I'll be happy to merge it.

Another thing we could do is to print a message after ng-add executes saying that the test runners are defaulted to Jest and Cypress, and pointing to the guide showing how to change to Karma and Protractor.

[vsavkin]

Folks. I"m going to close this issue.

We will use this one to track the docs update: https://github.com/nrwl/nx/issues/1903