// the find
calebporzio/better-phpunit
A better PHPUnit test runner for VS Code
A VS Code extension that runs PHPUnit tests via the terminal task runner, so you get color output and Problems panel integration instead of a plain terminal dump. Supports SSH, Docker, and Docker Compose setups, which is the real reason to reach for this over the built-in PHP test runners. Best suited for Laravel developers on local VMs or containerized stacks.
SSH and Docker path remapping is genuinely useful and not common in competing extensions. Using VS Code tasks instead of raw terminal commands means failures surface in the Problems panel automatically. Pest support is included alongside PHPUnit. The configurable command suffix lets you append arbitrary flags without forking the extension.
216 stars and last pushed February 2025 — the extension is low-traffic and the author (Caleb Porzio) has moved focus elsewhere; open issues are piling up. No test coverage detection or gutter decorations — you only know a test passed after running it. Fatal PHP errors and parser errors are explicitly on the wish list, still unimplemented, which means the extension goes silent on syntax breaks. The config surface for Docker-over-SSH combinations is underdocumented and error-prone to set up.