Writing integration tests in the Nextly monorepo

The rules that prevent 90% of the pain

1. Build first, always. Integration tests import built package output. Run from the repo ROOT (pnpm test:integration...) so turbo builds dependencies; a direct pnpm --filter nextly test:integration on an unbuilt tree fails 60+ files with self-import errors that look real.
2. Dialect URLs decide what runs. Tests self-skip when the dialect's URL is unset: TEST_POSTGRES_URL, TEST_MYSQL_URL (SQLite falls back to in-memory). The root scripts wire the standard local ports:
   • pnpm test:integration:postgres17 -> localhost:5435
   • pnpm test:integration:postgres15 -> localhost:5434
   • pnpm test:integration:mysql -> localhost:3307
   • pnpm test:integration:sqlite -> no URL needed pnpm docker:test does NOT start them — it probes the DEV stack's postgres service and exits 1 when that is down. Start them the way the running-builds-and-tests skill documents: docker start by container name when they already exist, docker compose -f docker-compose.test.yml up -d on a fresh clone. NEVER point a TEST_* URL at a database you did not create for the run.
3. Isolation is per-file prefixes, not parallelism. Use the canonical helper (packages/nextly/src/database/__tests__/integration/helpers/test-db.ts) which generates a random per-file table/schema prefix. In packages/nextly the integration config runs files sequentially (fileParallelism: false, single fork) because system-table suites share fixed table names like nextly_schema_events. Do not re-enable parallelism to make runs faster.
4. System tables come from production DDL. If a suite needs a Nextly system table, create it with the production helper (for example getSchemaEventsDdl(dialect)), never a hand-copied CREATE TABLE. Copies drift; there is a parity test that will catch you.

Writing a new suite

• Name it <area>.integration.test.ts; the unit config excludes that pattern and the integration config picks it up.
• Follow an existing suite in the same domain for setup/teardown shape.
• Timeouts are 30s in integration configs; if a test needs more, the test is usually doing too much.
• Cover Postgres AND at least one of MySQL/SQLite when the behavior touches SQL generation; the CI matrix runs all three dialects (.github/workflows/integration.yml).

Debugging failures

• "Cannot resolve nextly/testing" or self-import errors -> unbuilt tree, build first.
• Connection refused -> containers not up, or wrong port (see the mapping above). pnpm docker:test will not fix this and does not report on these containers at all; it probes the DEV database.
• A suite passes alone but fails in the full run -> table-name collision; check the suite uses the prefix helper, and that it is not creating a fixed-name system table directly.
• Do not add retries or sleeps to mask ordering issues; fix the isolation.