installation.md

Installation

TextRunner works on all platforms supported by Node.JS, including macOS, Windows, and Linux. To get started:

• install Node.JS version 24 or newer

• in the terminal, cd into the folder in which you want to use TextRunner

• Text-Runner is a Node.js application, so you need to have a package.json file. If you don't know what that is, create one with this content:

  {
    "name": "documentation-tests",
    "type": "module",
    "private": true
  }

• install TextRunner:

  npm install -D text-runner
  

• make sure it works by running:

  text-runner help
  

  If that doesn't work, try this:

  node node_modules/text-runner/start.js
  

This gives you an out-of-the-box installation of TextRunner. It checks for dead links and images.

Configuration

You can configure TextRunner via command-line options or a configuration file.

Creating a configuration file

To scaffold a configuration file, open a terminal, go to the folder where you want to configure TextRunner, and run:

text-runner setup

This creates a configuration file called text-runner.jsonc with this content:

{
  // link to the JSON schema that defines this document
  "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kevgo/text-runner/refs/heads/main/documentation/text-runner.schema.json",

  // white-list for files to test
  // This is a glob expression, see https://github.com/isaacs/node-glob#glob-primer
  // The folder "node_modules" is already excluded.
  // To exclude the "vendor" folder: '{,!(vendor)/**/}*.md'
  "files": "**/*.md",

  // black-list of files not to test
  // applied after the white-list above.
  "exclude": [],

  // the formatter to use (detailed, dot, progress, summary)
  "format": "detailed",

  // regex patterns for link targets to ignore
  "ignoreLinkTargets": [],

  // Define which folders of your Markdown source get compiled to HTML
  // and published under a different URL path.
  //
  // In this example, the public URL "/blog/foo"
  // would be hosted as "post/foo.md":
  // publications:
  //   - localPath: /posts/
  //     publicPath: /blog
  //     publicExtension: ''

  // Name of the default filename in folders.
  // If you set this, and a link points to a folder,
  // Text-Runner assumes the link points to the default file in that folder.
  // defaultFile: index.md

  // prefix that makes anchor tags active regions
  "regionMarker": "type",

  // whether to display/emit skipped activities
  "showSkipped": false,

  // whether to run the tests in an external temp directory,
  // uses ./tmp if false,
  // you can also provide a custom directory path here
  "systemTmp": false,

  // whether to verify online files/links (warning: this makes tests flaky)
  "online": false,

  // whether to delete all files in the workspace folder before running the tests
  "emptyWorkspace": true
}

Using a custom configuration file

By default Text-Runner uses a file text-runner.jsonc as the configuration file. You can tell it to use another configuration file with the --config command-line switch:

text-runner --config=my-config.jsonc

---

Read more about:

• the built-in actions
• writing your own user-defined actions
• installing TextRunner

---

Read more about:

• using some of the built-in actions
• writing your own user-defined actions