vue-test-utils: could not overwrite property $route, this is usually caused by a plugin that has added the property as a read-only value

I've looked at other answers with this problem, and it seems to be caused by trying to import vue-router into the test. This however, is not the case for my problem. Here is my test code:

import { mount, shallowMount, createLocalVue } from '@vue/test-utils'
import ListDetails from '../components/homepage/ListDetails'
import EntityList from '../components/homepage/EntityList'
import BootstrapVue from 'bootstrap-vue'
import Vuex from 'vuex'
import faker from 'faker'

const localVue = createLocalVue()

localVue.use(Vuex)
localVue.use(BootstrapVue)

describe('ListDetails.vue', () => {
    it('gets the correct page list when router list id param present', () => {
        const selected_list = {
            id: faker.random.number(),
            name: faker.lorem.words(),
            entries: []
        }

        testRouteListIdParam(selected_list)
    })
})

Then in testRouteListIdParam, I have:

function testRouteListIdParam(selected_list) {
    // just assume this sets up a mocked store properly.
    const store = setUpStore(selected_list, true)

    const $route = {
        path: `/homepage/lists/${selected_list.id}`
    }

    const wrapper = mount(ListDetails, {
        mocks: {
            $route
        },
        store,
        localVue
    })
}

As soon as mount() happens, I get the error:

[vue-test-utils]: could not overwrite property $route, this is usually caused by a plugin that has added the property as a read-only value

Any ideas why this would be happening? Again, I'm not using VueRouter anywhere in the unit tests, so I'm not sure why I'm getting the error. Could it be BootstrapVue or Vuex that are messing things up?

So this is a bug with vue-test-utils. If you are using VueRouter anywhere (even if it's not used in any unit test), you will get the above error.

A work around is to use process.env.NODE_ENV in your unit tests and set it to 'test', and wherever you're using VueRouter, check process.env.NODE_ENV like so:

if (!process || process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'test') {
    Vue.use(VueRouter)
}

at least until vue-test-utils bug is fixed, this should fix this problem