Welcome to “Continuous Improvement,” the podcast where we discuss solutions to common programming and development challenges. I’m your host, Victor. Today, we’re going to delve into an issue that many developers face when setting up continuous integration with CircleCI and Karma tests for Angular on Heroku.

So, picture this: you’ve been working hard on your Angular project, and you’re ready to set up continuous integration to ensure that your code is always tested and deployed smoothly. You choose CircleCI as your CI/CD platform because of its popularity and great features. You follow all the necessary steps, configure your build process, and run your tests locally. Everything seems to be working fine until you push your code to CircleCI. Suddenly, your tests fail, and you’re left scratching your head.

Let me paint you a clearer picture. The error message you see on CircleCI says, “Uh-oh, some tests have failed! Failing command: npm test. Exit code: 1. Output: > karma start karma.conf.js. sh: 1: karma: not found. npm ERR! Test failed. See above for more details.” Frustrating, isn’t it?

But fear not, my friends! I have a solution for you. After spending some time digging through forums and consulting the documentation, I found a way to resolve this issue.

To get Karma to work on CircleCI, you’ll need to make a small tweak to your CircleCI configuration file, commonly referred to as the circle.yml file. This file specifies the build process and dependencies required for your project.

Here’s what you need to do: open your circle.yml file and add the following lines of code:

dependencies:
  pre:
    - npm install -g karma-cli
  cache_directories:
    - ~/.npm

By adding these lines, you’re instructing CircleCI to install karma-cli globally before running your tests. This ensures that the karma command is available and avoids the dreaded “karma not found” error. Additionally, the cache_directories line ensures that npm dependencies are cached for faster builds.

Once you make these changes and push your code to CircleCI, you should see your tests running successfully, without any errors. And that’s it! You’ve conquered this challenge and brought continuous integration to your Angular project seamlessly.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of “Continuous Improvement.” I hope you found the solution to the CircleCI and Karma issue helpful. Remember, as developers, we encounter problems all the time, but it’s through continuous learning and improvement that we grow. Join me next time as we explore more programming challenges and their solutions.