Bats Shell Testing Patterns

About

This skill equips Claude with specialized knowledge to write, debug, and maintain shell script test suites using the Bats (Bash Automated Testing System) framework. It provides standardized patterns for testing exit codes, output strings, and file system changes, alongside advanced techniques for mocking external commands and stubbing environment variables. Whether you are building complex CLI tools or critical CI/CD pipeline scripts, these patterns ensure your shell utilities are reliable, portable across different shell dialects like Bash and Dash, and fully integrated into automated development workflows.

Key Features

• Advanced mocking and command stubbing techniques for external dependencies
• Standardized assertion patterns for exit codes, output matching, and file states
• 108 GitHub stars
• Setup and teardown fixtures for maintaining clean, isolated test environments
• Multi-shell compatibility testing for Bash, Sh, and Dash scripts
• CI/CD integration patterns for GitHub Actions and Makefile workflows

Use Cases

• Developing test-driven (TDD) CLI utilities and automation scripts
• Validating infrastructure-as-code shell scripts before deployment
• Ensuring shell script portability across various Linux distributions and environments