The Karma Test Runner’s dreaded Script Error

I have been using Karma Test Runner for javascript testing and like using PhantomJS as the test browser as it runs headless and is super fast. However every so often, I encounter the dreaded line:

Error: Script error

The error often looks like this in the console:

Since I work often in small cycles of test-code-commit (or just code-commit), my solution is often to rollback and try again. I thought I’d spend some time trying to work out how to get better diagnostics. A bit of digging around and the suggested way is simply to change browsers that give you a view of the javascript problem.

You do this by changing your karma configuration. In my karma.conf.js file I would tweak the value as below:

I then run the test again, and look at Chrome’s in built javascript console and look for errors:

Voila! A HTTP Not Found (404) for a resource I had declared in one of my require scripts. In this example, I intentionally added it in to cause that error, but this technique is useful for when you just can’t work out why something is not working.