The subtitle of jasmine-node is a good answer to your question:

DOM-less simple JavaScript BDD testing framework for Node

Let's go and look at the different parts of the answer:

DOM-less simple testing framework

jasmine is a JS testing tool. At the beginning JS was just for browsers. To give an output inside the browser there is this DOM Model, which is not so easy to use. Node.js gives you the possibility to run JS also on a server. On the server-side there is no DOM. To make things faster and easier you don't need a DOM implementation for your testing tool, when it just runs inside node.js

Jasmine itself is independent of a browser, so that is an intention for both jasmine and jasmine-node.

for Node

This is easy - jasmine-node is just for node and not for browser JS.

But behind that part there is the main purpose. Because the requirements between a brwoser test and a node.js test are totaly different. Because jamsine supports both ways it can not have all features, which are possible with node. If you look at the possible arguments at the documentation you see that there are much more options inside the CLI of jasmine-node. Some of the most interesting features are maybe:

• Test a file automaticaly, when it changes
• test coffeescript files directly

So to give you an answer to your question:

What is the purpose of jasmine-node?

jasmine-node provides you more CLI options for you tests. It can make some work automaticaly and it uses more of the node functions to provide that. So the future way for jasmine-node will be in providing more functions, which are just able to implement, when you just test on node.js

This should get you going quickly:

1. install Node.js (obviously).

2. Next install Jasmine. Open a command prompt and run:

   npm install -g jasmine

3. Next, cd to any directory and set up an example 'project':

   jasmine init
jasmine examples

4. Now run your unit tests:

   jasmine

If your jasmine.json file is somewhere else besides spec/support/jasmine.json, simply run:

jasmine JASMINE_CONFIG_PATH=relative/path/to/your/jasmine.json

For more info see:

• https://www.npmjs.com/package/jasmine
• http://jasmine.github.io/2.2/node.html

Pivatol recently added better node.js support to Jasmine in 2.0 and plans to release an official NPM package. For now you can use it from node by following the implementation used in their own node test suite.

Here is a brief explanation into what is happening under the covers in the code you wrote:

jasmine = jasmine.core(jasmine); When you initially require('jasmine') you are getting back a single function, getJasmineRequiredObj(); By calling jasmine.core(jasmine), you are tell jasmine to return it's behavioral methods using node exports statements instead of adding them onto the window.jasmineRequire object.

https://github.com/pivotal/jasmine/blob/master/src/core/requireCore.js

function getJasmineRequireObj() {
  if (typeof module !== 'undefined' && module.exports) {
    return exports;  
  } else {
    window.jasmineRequire = window.jasmineRequire || {};
    return window.jasmineRequire;
  }
}

// jRequire is window.jasmineRequire in a browser or exports in node.
getJasmineRequireObj().core = function(jRequire) {
  var j$ = {};

  jRequire.base(j$);
  j$.util = jRequire.util();
  j$.Any = jRequire.Any();
  ...
  return j$; // here is our jasmine object with all the functions we want.
};

jasmineConsole.console(jasmineConsole, jasmine) Jasmine initializes it's core functions separately from it's reporters. This statement is essentially the same thing as jasmine.core(jasmine) only for the console reporter.

https://github.com/pivotal/jasmine/blob/master/src/console/requireConsole.js

If you want to use jasmine tests for your Node.JS application just install jasmine-node.

Simply jasmine and jasmine-core the same packages cause it's link to the same github repository, they're for the simple js BDD tests.