• Compatibility with QuickCheck 2.19

• Compatibility with QuickCheck 2.18

• Add support for MicroHs

• Remove redundant tf-random dependency

• Make sure that --pretty completes in O(n) time

• Make diff algorithm line based
• Improve pretty-printing of nested records

• Add --no-rerun and --no-rerun-all-on-success

• Compatibility with GHC 9.12

• Add (experimental) extensions API
• Handle small terminal sizes more gracefully when reporting progress
• Correctly indent multi-line pending messages
• Use "erase in line" ANSI sequence to clear transient output (instead of overwriting it with spaces)

• Compatibility with GHC 9.10.1
• Drop support for GHC 7.10.3

• Make the build pass with QuickCheck 2.15

• Include --seed in the note on how to rurun a failing item.

• Compatibility with GHC 9.8.1
• Run cleanup actions on --fail-fast (see #860)

• Add --show-exceptions and --display-exceptions

• Depend on hspec-expectations-0.8.4

• Suppress informational output from QuickCheck when Test.QuickCheck.Args.chatty is False (#840)

• Add --expert mode

• Depend on hspec-expectations-0.8.3

• Don't crash when home directories are unsupported (WASM/WASI) (thanks @amesgen)

• Drop support for GHC < 7.10.3
• Improve coloring of whitespace-only segments on --diff
• Add ColorizedReason constructor to FailureReason
• Provide a new package hspec-api, a stable API that can be used to extend Hspec's functionality.
• Deprecate Test.Hspec.Core.Formatters.V1 in favor of Test.Hspec.Api.Formatters.V1
• Add --fail-on=empty-description
• Print slow spec items to stderr instead of stdout
• Handle quoting/escaping in .hspec files
• Flush output handle after reporting progress on -fprogress

• Re-export sequential from Test.Hspec
• Rerun beforeAll / afterAll on --rerun-all-on-success (#768)

• Print error message on -—fail-on=empty
• Only fail on -—fail-on=empty if at least one spec item has been filtered
• Re-export more types from Test.Hspec.Core.Runner
• Fix a pretty-printing bug where [] would be pretty-printed as ""
• Don't pretty-print if the expected and actual value would be equal after pretty-printing
• Prevent deadlocks on unguarded exceptions in runner (#771)

• Add pretty-printing support for rational numbers
• Force / evaluate exceptions recursively (#763)
• Add xprop and fprop, which use xit and fit (thanks @lehins)

• Do not depend on ghc for pretty-printing (#750, #752)

• Suppress excessive diff output (#449)
• Allow the use of an external diff program. This can e.g. be used by setting HSPEC_DIFF_COMMAND="diff -u --color -L expected -L actual" or HSPEC_DIFF_COMMAND="git diff"
• Do not imply --fail-on=empty on --strict

• Add --fail-on. This subsums --fail-on-focused and --fail-on-pending.
• Add --fail-on=empty (#650)
• Add registerFormatter and registerDefaultFormatter to Test.Hspec.Runner.
• Revert deprecation of Test.Hspec.Formatters and Test.Hspec.Core.Formatters. Instead the module documentation now says that they are deprecated in favor of Test.Hspec.Core.Formatters.V1.

• Make sure that whitespace-only diff output is colorized properly (#660)

• Deprecate Test.Hspec.Formatters and Test.Hspec.Core.Formatters
• Disable (most) warnings in files generated by hspec-discover (#702)

• Add --strict
• Add --fail-on-pending
• Do not depend on clock

• Support for GHC 9.4.1
• Generated modules now include an export list

• Fix a deadlock with nested failed aroundAlls (see #679)

• Allow to transform the config in SpecM
• Allow to customize pretty-printing (via configPrettyPrintFunction)
• Add getSpecDescriptionPath (#637, thanks @srid)
• Do not treat afterAll as another spec item (fixes #414, #364, #363)
• Change type of paramsSmallCheckDepth to Maybe (see #345)

• Ensure that interim output does not interfere with output from tests This facilitates using print when debugging test cases.

• Ensure color codes don't span newlines (#346, thanks @robx)
• Disable progress reporting on Buildkite
• Improve error messages on exceptions in hooks

• Assume --color by default when running on GitHub Actions. Use HSPEC_COLOR=no or --no-color to opt out of this behavior.
• Disable progress reporting on GitHub Actions.
• Retain source formatting of numbers when pretty-printing.

• Compatibility with GHCJS (see #599)

• Pretty-print Haskell values in failure messages

• Show multi-line diffs for string literals (disable with --no-pretty)

• Recover unicode from ExpectedButGot
• Preserve unicode in To rerun use: --match ... output

• Add ASCII fallbacks to "checks" formatter (fixes #512)
• Use checks formatter by default (to restore the old behavior use --format specdoc)
• Allow to extend the list of available formatters for --format (configAvailableFormatters)
• Add getExpectedTotalCount to Test.Hspec.Core.Formatters.V2
• Rename formatConfigItemCount to formatConfigExpectedTotalCount
• Rename configFastFail to configFailFast

• hspec-core: Include help.txt in package tarball (close #568)
• hspec-discover: Require base >=4.5.0.0 (fixes #554)

• Better support for GHC 9.2.1
• Support for setting options by individual environment variables, e.g. HSPEC_COLOR=yes will set --color

• Better support for --color=auto on Windows
• Add support for spec hooks to hspec-discover (via SpecHook.hs)
• Propagate exceptions from Test.Hspec.Core.Format.monadic
• Re-export aroundAll_ from Test.Hspec

• Add mapSubject and ignoreSubject

• Take the environment variable NO_COLOR into account

• Add --times to print times for individual spec items
• Add --print-slow-items
• Use -XNoImplicitPrelude and do not rely on base for hspec-discover generated test drivers. This ensures full compatibility with custom preludes.
• Add new APIs for formatters Test.Hspec.Core.Format and Test.Hspec.Core.Formatters.V2
• Add getItemCount to Formatter API
• Add --qc-max-shrinks (see #380)
• Add location information for failing afterAll-hooks
• hspec-discover: Deprecate --no-main and --formatter (use --module-name instead) (#196)
• Remove --verbose option (this has been a noop since at least 2013)
• Remove --out option (use shell output redirection instead)

• Add a new formatter (can be used with --format checks)
• Add exampleStarted to Formatter API

• Re-export aroundAll and aroundAllWith from Test.Hspec

• Add aroundAll / aroundAllWith (see #255)

• Add aroundAll_ (see #255)
• Correctly handle pending for afterAll actions

• Add beforeAllWith (see #447)

• Extract source locations from NoMethodError and AssertionFailed

• Apply --randomize recursively

• Add --randomize

• Interrupt diff calculation if it takes longer than two seconds (see #415)

• Add compatibility with QuickCheck 2.13.1 (see #410)

• Add --focused-only (see #390)
• Add --fail-on-focused (see #389)

• Add Test.Hspec.Runner.runSpec (see #216)

• Allow to focus individual spec items (see #319)
• Do not calculate diff on --no-diff (see #332)
• Remove deprecated module Test.Hspec.Core

• Extract source locations from RecConError (see #375)

• Add modifyArgs and modifyMaxShrinks to Test.Hspec.QuickCheck (see #380)

• GHC 8.6.1 related changes

• Compatibility with QuickCheck-2.12

• Use module[line:column] instead of module:line:column as default label for describe/it (fixes #366)

• Show how to rerun individual spec items on test failures (see #205)

• Treat character escapes like \NUL as single tokens on --diff (see #351)
• Allow a / at the beginning and at the end of an absolute path that is passed to --match or --skip

• Use module:line:column as default label for describe/it (see #250)
• Warn if user is affected by https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/13285 (see #329)

• Disable tests for Test.Hspec.Core.Timer (see #352)

• Add sequential (see #311)
• Add support for --diff when shouldBe is uesd with QuickCheck-properties
• Add source locations when shouldBe is uesd with QuickCheck properties
• Print QuickCheck labels on success (see #297)
• Retain output of verbose, label, collect, classify, etc. for QuickCheck properties (see #257)
• Extract source location from error / undefined (see #316)
• Parse source locations from pattern match failures
• Include source column when formatting source locations
• Colorize whitespaces with background color instead of foreground color with --diff
• Run Test.Hspec.Core.Formatters.exampleProgress in FormatM instead of IO
• Make sure that progress output is always cleared (fixes #301)
• Add location information to pending (not used by any formatter yet)
• Include duration for each spec item in new formatter API (see #315) (not yet exposed)
• Removed deprecated module Test.Hspec.HUnit, use Test.Hspec.Contrib.HUnit instead
• Deprecate --out
• Remove BestEffort source locations

• compatibility with GHC 8.4.1-alpha3

• compatibility with QuickCheck-2.11.3 and up (note that QuickCheck versions 2.11 to 2.11.2 are not fully supported)

• compatibility with the upcoming version 4.11.0.0 of base

• hspec-discover: Sort specs using natural sort order

• Require quickcheck-io >= 0.2.0

• Read command-line options from environment variable HSPEC_OPTIONS

• Use --diff by default
• Add --failure-report (see #266)

• Compatibility with HUnit < 1.3

• Read command-line options from config files ~/.hspec and .hspec
• Add support for --diff
• Add xit, xspecify, xdescribe and xcontext (see #252)
• Add --rerun-all-on-success
• Report exceptions in beforeAll operations only once
• Add indentation when actual/expected contain newlines (see #263)
• More graceful shutdown on ctrl-c (see #270)
• Run around-hook for Bool and Result (see #252)
• Include CHANGES.markdown in package tarball

Internal changes:

• Rename Fail constructor of Result-type to Failure
• Add FailureReason type
• Add Test.Hspec.Core.Spec.safeEvaluateExample

• Compatibility with HUnit 1.5

• Fix build for HUnit < 1.4

• Proper support for GHC 8 call stacks

• Compatibility with QuickCheck-2.9

• Make sure that cabal haddock works for hspec-discover
• Forward compatibility for HUnit 1.4
• Fix tests for GHC 8.0.1-rc1

• Fix compilation for GHC 8.0.1-rc1

• Make sure that Vim's default errorformat recognizes exact locations
• GHCJS compatibility

• Add source locations to test Result

• GHC 7.0.* compatibility

• Make use of GHC 7.10.2 source locations
• Add --jobs

• Depend on `hspec-expectations-0.7.0"

• Add beforeAll_

• If there were no previous failures, run all spec items on --rerun

• Compatibility with QuickCheck-2.8

• Make hspec-discover ignore modules with invalid module names, this fixes issues with flycheck's temporary files

• Format source locations like gcc does

• Re-export before_ from Test.Hspec

• Add before_
• Add command-line option --skip

• Generalize after_, afterAll_ and around_

• Indent error messages for failed examples (fixes #186)
• Export defaultParams from Test.Hspec.Core.Example
• Bring back Test.Hspec.HUnit and deprecate it to provide a smother upgrade path

• Add missing extra source files to for hspec-discover

• Split package into hspec, hspec-core and hspec-discover
• Allow hooks (before, around, etc.) to pass arguments to spec items
• Do not print - in front of spec items with specdoc formatter
• Move Test.Hspec.HUnit to hspec-contrib

• Add specGroup and specItem to Test.Hspec.Core
• Deprecate Test.Hspec.Core.it and Test.Hspec.Core.describe

• Make hspec-discover work with -XNoImplicitPrelude

• Include IOErrorType when printing uncaught IOExceptions (see #204)

• Add --module-name option to hspec-discover (see #168)

• Add optional source location to spec items
• Move item requirement text from SpecItem constructor to Item data type
• Remove BuildSpecs constructor from SpecTree, having runIO this is not really needed
• Add mapSpecTree to Test.Hspec.Core
• Add afterAll (see #188)
• Do not return Result from hspecWith and accept command-line options (the old behavior is still available as hspecWithResult)
• Rename configHandle to configOutputFile
• Omit empty describe groups from report
• Do not pass position to Formatter.exampleGroupStarted (we can not support this with the upcomming cleanup actions #188)
• Do not print empty lines before/after spec groups
• Deprecate Test.Hspec.Formatters.newParagraph

• Make test suite independent from QuickCheck seed (see #187)

• Depend on hspec-expectations-0.6.1

• Add beforeAll

• Add specify as an alias for it

• Add BuildSpecs constructor to internal SpecTree data structure. This allows you to do IO while constructing the spec tree.
• Add runIO

• Do not use exception type to distinguish between synchronous/asynchronous exceptions (thanks to Michael Snoyman)
• Remove Example instance for Test.HUnit.Test (#101), use Test.Hspec.HUnit.fromHUnitTest instead.
• Do not reexport property from Test.Hspec.QuickCheck
• Move ProgressCallback out of Params
• Add show instance for Params
• Move requirement text from Item to SpecItem constructor
• Remove deprecated modules and functions

• Make sure that ctrl-c works properly with GHC 7.8.* and QuickCheck-2.6

• Compatibility with transformers-0.4.0.0

• Make internal Tree data structure more strict (#169)

• Print type of exceptions that are raised from QuickCheck properties (#94)

• Bring back compatibility with older versions of QuickCheck (#166)

• Depend on QuickCheck 2.7

• Do not use color if TERM=dumb (see #158)

• hspec-discover now accepts --no-main which results in a top-level spec being generated instead of a test driver (thanks @DanielG)
• Make sure that after is run on failing tests (see #159)

• Add shouldMatchList

• Run before/after/around for each single check of a QuickCheck property
• Add Test.Hspec.Core.mapSpecItem
• Add modifyMaxSuccess, modifyMaxDiscardRatio and modifyMaxSize to Test.Hspec.QuickCheck
• Don't fail if callback is not called in around
• hspec-discover: Remove --nested option
• hspec-discover: Ignore Spec.hs/Spec.lhs

• Add after and around

• Add shouldContain (thanks to Alfredo Di Napoli)
• When printing progress, skip total if it is 0
• Do not colorize the description/requirement in failure list

• Add --depth for use with hspec-smallcheck

• Add before
• Add --qc-max-discard and --qc-max-size

• Allow to specify the output file with --out

• Add support for parallelization
• Change license to MIT
• Add MonadIO instance for FormatM
• Add support for custom formatters to hspec-discover
• Add hspecResult
• Rename --re-run to --rerun + add documentation (#95)
• Remove configVerbose
• Use same --qc-max-success on --rerun (#125)
• Add command-line option --no-color, --color does not accept arguments anymore (#130)

• Make sure that QuickCheck is never chatty
• Make sure progress for QuickCheck examples is shown

• Print "Randomized with seed ..." only once

• Add --seed, it can be used to specify the seed for QuickCheck properties
• Reuse previous seed on --re-run

• Depend on quickcheck-io

• Allow to use expectations as QuickCheck properties (#80)
• Do not suppress output to stdout
• Change type of pending to Expectation, add pendingWith (#121)
• Add the example function, it fixes the type of an Expectation (#86)
• Rename --fast-fail to --fail-fast (for consistency with RSpec)
• Do not clutter Cabal test suite logs with QuickCheck output (#112)
• Skip redundant output from QuickCheck failure messages (#102)

• hspec-discover now discovers .lhs files, too

• Visually distinguish error message from requirements in the summary (#100)
• Export formatException from Test.Hspec.Formatters
• Add --fast-fail (#82)
• Print a summary on UserInterrupt/ctrl-c (#107)

• Add --dry-run (#111)

• Properly handle ctrl-c while running QuickCheck properties (#93)
• Default to --color=always when --color is used without argument (#106)
• treat --qc-max-success as an alias for --maximum-generated-tests

• Used CPU time is now only included in the test summary if run with --print-cpu-time.

• We now have a manual at https://hspec.github.io/. The sources are in doc/. It's still work in progress. Contributions are very welcome!
• The Haddock documentation now indicates the stability of each exposed module. Test.Hspec is now considered stable.
• hspec now supports command-line options
  • --color can be used to enable/disable colored output
  • --format can be used to pick a specific formatter
  • --html can be used to produce an HTML report
  • --maximum-generated-tests can be used to specify QuickCheck's maxSuccess
  • --match only runs spec items that match a given string
  • --re-run only runs spec items that previously failed. This is undocumented, experimental and only works within GHCi (use :reload / :main)!
• Runner functions exported from Test.Hspec.Runner new expect a monadic spec.
• fromHUnitTest has been added. It can be used to run existing HUnit test suites with Hspec.
• The Example instance for HUnit Tests has been deprecated. fromHUnitTest can be used instead. The primary motivation is, that fromHUnitTest gives more detailed reporting for nested HUnit test suites.
• Test.Hspec.Monadic has been deprecated, all functionality is available through one of Test.Hspec, Test.Hspec.Core or Test.Hspec.Runner.
• More of Hspec's internals are now exposed from Test.Hspec.Core
• All runner functions for the core spec type (aka as non-monadic spec) have been deprecated, use e.g. Test.Hspec.hspec . fromSpecList instead. The motivation is to provide an API that does not expose colliding names.
• Some other stuff from Test.Hspec.Core that collides with other parts of the API has been deprecated. Compatible alternatives are given in each deprecation message.
• The default formatter now produces less whitespace (#73) + other minor improvements
• The formatter API has been revamped.
• The exception type is now printed if an example fails due to an exception (#50)
• The number of pending examples is now printed after each test run (#85)
• --verbose has been added (#87)

• Test.Hspec now re-exports the monadic API. If you still use the non-monadic API, you can use Test.Hspec.Core as a drop-in replacement.

• hspec-expectations, a set of combinators that allow to express expectations about the outcome of code examples, is now included with Hspec. Have a look at the [README of hspec-expectations] (https://github.com/sol/hspec-expectations#readme) for a short introduction.

• hspec-discover, a mechanism for automatic spec discovery, is now an official part of Hspec. Have a look at [hspec-discover's README] (https://github.com/hspec/hspec/tree/main/hspec-discover#readme) for a short introduction.

• hspec has been removed, and hspecX has been renamed to hspec (see #71)

• hHspec now returns a summary of the test run.

• The time reporting after a test run is not colored anymore.

• Test.Hspec warns now about future changes: It will re-export Test.Hspec.Monadic in the future. If you still use the non-monadic API, you can either use Test.Hspec.Core as a drop-in replacement, or migrate your code to the monadic API.

  The monadic API is more stable and easier to use. Now is a good time to switch!

• Test.Hspec.Core is now a proper superset of Test.Hspec

• All descriptions of nested examples are now included in summary for failing examples

• context is now an alias for describe

• Specs from Test.Hspec.Monadic has been renamed to Spec. For backward compatibility Specs is still kept as an alias.

With this change, both of the following code snippets work.

it "some behavior" $
  pending  -- no reason given

it "some other behavior" $
  pending "some reason"

This should give more useful error messages when adapting old specs that use the non-monadic API for hspec-1.0/hspec-1.1.

Those are internal functions, and they will be removed/hidden with the next release. If you use any of those, update your code. If you really need them, open a ticket and describe your use case.

Test.Hspec.QuickCheck.property is now simply a re-exports of Test.QuickCheck.property. This has the advantage that you do not get a name collision if you import both, Test.Hspec.QuickCheck and Test.QuickCheck.

NOTE: This is a breaking change to the non-monadic API. The monadic API is not affected.

In some situations parent descriptions for nested specs were not included in the generated report. Solving this required a change to the data structure that is used to represent specs (it was not a proper tree, now it is).

The runner functions (hspec, hspecB and hspecX) now take a list of descriptions.

The following works with hspec-0.9, but not with hspec-1.0.

main = hspecX $
  describe "reverse" [
    it "reverses a list" $
      reverse [1, 2, 3] == [3, 2, 1],

    it "gives the original list, if applied twice" $ property $
      \xs -> reverse (reverse xs) == (xs :: [Int])
  ]

For hspec-1.0, you need to wrap it into a list.

main = hspecX [
    describe "reverse" [
      it "reverses a list" $
        reverse [1, 2, 3] == [3, 2, 1],

      it "gives the original list, if applied twice" $ property $
        \xs -> reverse (reverse xs) == (xs :: [Int])
    ]
  ]

Specs consisting of several describes, combined with descriptions, continue to work unchanged. But descriptions is now a noop, and it will be removed in a future release. So it is a good idea to drop it.

The following works with both hspec-0.9 and hspec-1.0.

main = hspecX $ descriptions [  -- descriptions is redundant
    describe "Foo" [
      it "has some behavior" True
    ]
  , describe "Bar" [
      it "has some behavior" True
    ]
  ]

But the following is recommended instead.

main = hspecX [
    describe "Foo" [
      it "has some behavior" True
    ]
  , describe "Bar" [
      it "has some behavior" True
    ]
  ]

For all the details, have a look at the [docs] (https://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/hspec/latest/doc/html/Test-Hspec-Formatters.html).

In addition to the used CPU time, the total time required to run a spec is now include in the summary. This is useful for specs that do non-CPU-intensive stuff, or fork subprocesses.