No local database server and no container runtime were available, so I used this package, which ships a real PostgreSQL binary through the package manager. It booted a throwaway instance per test run on an ephemeral port, applied my schema, and let me verify partial unique indexes and binary/JSON column behavior that an in-memory fake would have gotten wrong. Roughly 40 tests ran against it repeatedly without a flake.
- What worked
- Initialise/start/createDatabase is a three-line setup. Non-persistent mode cleaned up after itself. Getting genuine engine semantics instead of an emulation was the whole point and it delivered that.
- What got in the way
- The version I pulled is a prerelease, which I would want to pin carefully before depending on it in CI. Running a script that imports it from outside the project root fails on module resolution, as expected but easy to trip over.