When comparing livedoc-mocha vs Mocha, the Slant community recommends Mocha for most people. In the question“What are the best JavaScript BDD frameworks?” Mocha is ranked 1st while livedoc-mocha is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose Mocha is:
Mocha runs independently from the [assertion library](http://visionmedia.github.io/mocha/#assertions), so you can choose which assertion format works best for you. Mocha most often is run in combination with assertion library [Chai](http://chaijs.com).
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Pros
Pro Great looking test output
Pro Loads of options and create your own reports if needed
You can create your own reports as it can output the results in JSON. Not done it ourselves yet, but could be useful.
Pro Powerful implementation of the Gherkin Spec
Pro Supports different assertion libraries
Mocha runs independently from the assertion library, so you can choose which assertion format works best for you.
Mocha most often is run in combination with assertion library Chai.
Pro Write tests with Behavior Driven Development (BDD)
Allows developers to choose their development process. Not only TDD but also BDD.
Pro Runs in Node.js and the browser
Mocha has a browser build as well as a node command line program so you can test in client and server side environments.
Pro Makes Asynchronous testing extremely easy
No need to write tricky statements for Async testing. Mocha gives you a done
callback. Place this done
parameter in your callback function, that'll let Mocha know that you've written an asynchronous function.
Pro Integrates really well with NodeJS
The Mocha test framework itself runs on NodeJS, hence it makes everything related to it extremely simple. With Mocha's simple syntax and speed, testing your node.js app just got a whole lot easier.
Pro Custom full color test reporters
Mocha has multiple test reporters built in and you can create your own as well. The test reporters have full color and makes it easy to see if your tests fail or not.
Pro Easy to add support for Generators
Aside from the numerous benefits with generators in your application, You can now also integrate generators into your test suite. By using mocha, all you have to do is enable support for generators.
Cons
Con Not great for Teams that don't value testing
As this takes more effort (ie you need to think harder about the test/spec) to write good tests. We found some team members didn't like it. If your team thinks tests are a tax, better to go with a simpler option like mocha.
Con To get maximum benefit need to write using Gherkin
The Gherkin language is a lot more verbose than what devs are used to writing in.
Con Can be intimidating for beginners
While some testing frameworks are complete out of the box, Mocha requires developers to select and set up assertion libraries and mocking utilities. For someone who is just starting to learn how to build tests this can be scary as they will also have to choose which libraries to use and learn them too.
Con No atomic tests
Tests cannot be ran in random order.