Proposal: always default test runner to use spec reporter

[cjihrig]

What is the problem this feature will solve?

The test runner currently uses the more human friendly spec reporter when a TTY output is detected. Otherwise, it defaults to generating TAP output. I think the cons of this behavior outweigh the pros.

In Node core, this would remove occurrences of nested TAP output which can cause issues like #54535. We also have a number of places throughout the codebase, such as the GitHub Actions config, where we force the spec reporter anyway.

In userland, it is a DX improvement (no more TAP output in CI runs). TAP output would still be available via the --test-reporter=tap

What is the feature you are proposing to solve the problem?

Make the default test runner reporter be spec.

Notes:

• This would be a semver major change.
• We should try to avoid churn in snapshot output by forcing the output to whatever is currently being used. This will help avoid conflicts in the future and make backporting other changes simpler.

What alternatives have you considered?

No response

[targos]

I'm +1, but I've never had a TAP parser in my pipeline so I don't really know if the impact is big.

[cjihrig]

The impact would be for people who want TAP output to pass --test-reporter=tap when starting Node. I think that is pretty reasonable for a semver major change.

EDIT: It's worth noting that while this changes a default, passing --test-reporter=tap would be backward compatible to all versions of Node since test reporters were introduced.

[avivkeller]

Fixed by #54548