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Managing Vitest config file

If you are using Vite and have a vite.config file, Vitest will read it to match with the plugins and setup as your Vite app. If you want to have a different configuration for testing or your main app doesn't rely on Vite specifically, you could either:

  • Create vitest.config.ts, which will have the higher priority and will override the configuration from vite.config.ts (Vitest supports all conventional JS and TS extensions, but doesn't support json) - it means all options in your vite.config will be ignored
  • Pass --config option to CLI, e.g. vitest --config ./path/to/vitest.config.ts
  • Use process.env.VITEST or mode property on defineConfig (will be set to test/benchmark if not overridden with --mode) to conditionally apply different configuration in vite.config.ts

To configure vitest itself, add test property in your Vite config. You'll also need to add a reference to Vitest types using a triple slash command at the top of your config file, if you are importing defineConfig from vite itself.

Using defineConfig from vite you should follow this:

ts
/// <reference types="vitest" />
import { defineConfig } from 'vite'

export default defineConfig({
  test: {
    // ... Specify options here.
  },
})

The <reference types="vitest" /> will stop working in Vitest 3, but you can start migrating to vitest/config in Vitest 2.1:

ts
/// <reference types="vitest/config" />
import { defineConfig } from 'vite'

export default defineConfig({
  test: {
    // ... Specify options here.
  },
})

Using defineConfig from vitest/config you should follow this:

ts
import { defineConfig } from 'vitest/config'

export default defineConfig({
  test: {
    // ... Specify options here.
  },
})

You can retrieve Vitest's default options to expand them if needed:

ts
import { configDefaults, defineConfig } from 'vitest/config'

export default defineConfig({
  test: {
    exclude: [...configDefaults.exclude, 'packages/template/*'],
  },
})

When using a separate vitest.config.js, you can also extend Vite's options from another config file if needed:

ts
import { defineConfig, mergeConfig } from 'vitest/config'
import viteConfig from './vite.config'

export default mergeConfig(viteConfig, defineConfig({
  test: {
    exclude: ['packages/template/*'],
  },
}))

If your Vite config is defined as a function, you can define the config like this:

ts
import { defineConfig, mergeConfig } from 'vitest/config'
import viteConfig from './vite.config'

export default defineConfig(configEnv => mergeConfig(
  viteConfig(configEnv),
  defineConfig({
    test: {
      exclude: ['packages/template/*'],
    },
  })
))

Released under the MIT License.