Improve debugging experience

[maelle]

From ropensci-books/http-testing#51 (comment)

• Should vcr switch back to creating a helper file instead of a setup file? Helper files in tests/testthat are no longer recommended but they are still supported and have the advantage of being loaded by load_all(). See https://deploy-preview-134--admiring-allen-9a00b2.netlify.app/2020/11/18/testthat-utility-belt/ Otherwise in docs about debugging one would simply recommend to source the setup file, which isn't bad either.

• Could vcr have a function à la testthat::test_path() that'd return the path to tests/fixtures when run in tests and when run from the root of the package? This way in the configuration there would be

library("vcr")
invisible(vcr::vcr_configure(
  dir = vcr::test_path("fixtures") # one could still choose another location
))
vcr::check_cassette_names()

where vcr::test_path("fixtures") is ../fixtures in tests, and tests/fixtures otherwise.

• Could there be a vignette about debugging explaining the above and also mentioning insert_cassette()? Because if you are debugging the code in a test you might prefer using insert_cassette() instead of use_cassette(), as it allows more interactive debugging (you can run the code in the test, add a line, see retrying happening whereas testthat hides messages, etc)

[maelle]

A related question, could insert_cassette() return the cassette invisibly?

[sckott]

Should vcr switch back to creating a helper file instead of a setup file

The current vcr version on cran still has helper instead of setup https://github.com/ropensci/vcr/blob/v0.5.4/R/vcr_setup.R so at least users of the cran version won't notice any change if we revert back to helper here.

I think it does make sense to go back to helper

If we go back to helper do we still need the test_path fxn?

[maelle]

Yes because the path in vcr_configure wouldn't work in both tests and from the root of the package