There are two ways. The easy one is to use the -run flag and provide a
pattern matching names of the tests you want to run. Example:
go test packageName -run NameOfTest
See the docs for more info.
Note that the -run flag may also run other tests if they contain the string
NameOfTest, as the -run flag matches a regexp. So to ensure that only a
test named exactly 'NameOfTest' is run, one has to use the regexp ^NameOfTest$:
go test -run "^NameOfTest$"
The other way is to name the specific file, containing the tests you want to run:
go test -v foo_test.go
But there's a catch. This works well if:
foo.go is in package foo.foo_test.go is in package foo_test and imports 'foo'.If foo_test.go and foo.go are the same package (a common case) then you
must name all other files required to build foo_test. In this example it
would be:
go test foo_test.go foo.go
I'd recommend to use the -run pattern. Or, where/when possible, always run
all package tests.
@zzzz's answer is mostly complete, but just to save others from having to dig through the referenced documentation you can run a single test in a package as follows:
go test packageName -run TestName
Note that you want to pass in the name of the test, not the file name where the test exists.
The -run flag actually accepts a regex so you could limit the test run to a class of tests. From the docs:
-run regexp
Run only those tests and examples matching the regular
expression.
When running a single test I usually do:
go test -run TestSomethingReallyCool ./folder1/folder2/ -v -count 1
-count 1 also ensures that the test is ran every time instead of being cached. Useful when you are testing against race conditions and have a test that fails only sometimes. In Go versions not using modules the same could be achieved by setting GOCACHE=off but this interacts poorly with Go modules.
Visual Studio Code shows a link at the top of a Go test file which lets you run all the tests in just that file.
In the "Output" window, you can see that it automatically generates a regex which contains all of the test names in the current file:
Running tool: C:\Go\bin\go.exe test -timeout 30s -run ^(TestFoo|TestBar|TestBaz)$ rootpackage\mypackage
Note: the very first time you open a Go file in VS Code it automatically offers to install some Go extensions for you. I assume the above requires that you have previously accepted the offer to install.
