A Vim plugin for PowerShell Pester syntax highlighting.

From the Pester project:

Pester provides a framework for running unit tests to execute and validate PowerShell commands from within PowerShell. Pester consists of a simple set of functions that expose a testing domain-specific language (DSL) for isolating, running, evaluating and reporting the results of PowerShell commands.

I didn't find any existing syntax highlighting for Pester scripts which are basically PowerShell scripts with additional Pester commands. vim-pester extends vim-ps1 for these additional Pester specific keywords.

vim-pester will set the filetype to "ps1pester" and is triggered for filenames with "*.Tests.ps1" (according to the Pester documentation) and uses runtime! syntax/ps1.vim to include all of the highlighting of ps1.vim (see "Dependencies" below).

Use the following in your vimrc to enable syntax highlighting and indenting:

syntax on
filetype plugin indent on

For indenting it's only the fix for # so that it not jumps to the beginning of the line while in insert mode.

vim-pester depends on the Vim plugin vim-ps1 for PowerShell syntax highlighting and folding.

Code snippets for Pester (i.a. from Pester ISE snippets) are available for using in combination with the simple and lightweight code complete plugin. The snippets in the file ps1pester_snippets.vim can be used by setting the option g:user_defined_snippets in your vimrc or by coping the content into your existing snippet file.

For example, you can type describe<TAB> (when using the default completion key) and it will be exanded to the following and you are able to jump between the fields with .

Describe '<...>' {
	<...>
}

Available snippets:

describe, context, it, shouldbe, shouldbeexactly, shouldbelike,
shouldbelikeExactly, shouldbegreater, shouldbeless, shouldbenull,
shouldcontain, shouldcontainexactly, shouldexist, shouldmatch,
shouldmatchexactly, shouldnotbe, shouldnotcontain, shouldnotexist,
shouldnotmatch, shouldthrow, shouldnotthrow, shouldbeoftype, beforeeach,
aftereach, beforeall, afterall, mock, newmockobject, assertmockcalled,
inmodulescope, settestinconclusive

You can put the following line into your vimrc to use <ctrl-n> and <ctrl-p> for word completion:

set dictionary+=~\path-to-snippet-file\ps1pester_snippets.vim

The snippets could be also ported to the more heavy-weight and well-known UltiSnips or SnipMate. But currently, that's not yet the case.

You can also use the following simple abbreviation in your vimrc without the need for any further plugins.

:iab Describe Describe{<CR>}<ESC>kwi
:iab Context Context{<CR>}<ESC>kwi
:iab It It{<CR>}<ESC>kwi
...

Add the following lines to your ctags.conf to build the tags for Pester describe blocks and to build tags for PowerShell scripts. Remove "xxxxxCommentxxxxx" if you would like to have also the variable definitions.

--langdef=pester
--langmap=pester:.ps1
--regex-pester=/describe\s+'(.*)'/\1/m, method/i

--langdef=powershell
--langmap=powershell:.psm1.ps1
--regex-powershell=/function\s+(script:)?([a-zA-Z\-]+)/\2/m, method/i
--regex-powershell=/xxxxxCommentxxxxx\s*\[.*\]\s*\$([a-zA-Z\-]+)/\1/v, variable/i
--regex-powershell=/xxxxxCommentxxxxx\$global:([a-zA-Z\-]+)/\1/v, globalvariable/i

Set the following taglist settings if needed.

let g:tlist_ps1_settings = 'powershell;m:method'
let g:tlist_ps1pester_settings = 'pester;m:method'

Use the ctags command to generate the tags.

ctags -R --languages=pester
ctags -R --languages=powershell

The format is based on Keep a Changelog and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

• Code snippets for using with the code complete plugin.
• Add new syntax keywords: afterall, beforeall.

• Own filetype plugin and indent files (clone of vim-ps1) to be able to apply the same PowerShell specific indentation for comments ('#')

• Change filetype detection to more specific Pester filenames with a point in front of "Tests" ("*.Tests.ps1").

• Basic syntax highlighting for Pester commands according to the Pester command reference