David Chelimsky: RSpec-0.9.1 and Autotest (ZenTest-3.5.2)

RSpec-0.9.1 and Autotest (ZenTest-3.5.2)

David — Tue, 01 May 2007 08:27:00 -0400

Autotest (part of ZenTest) now supports RSpec. This is fantastic news! For those of you who do not know about autotest, it is a program that runs in the background while you are writing your tests and code. Each time you make a change it automatically reruns your tests – and now your specs, too! This is a powerful addition to the TDD/BDD experience.

Recent releases of both tools overlapped a bit so there are changes in RSpec-0.9.1 that are not reflected yet in ZenTest. Also, while ZenTest-3.5.2 supports Spec::Rails, RSpec’s Ruby on Rails plugin, it does not support non-Rails Ruby projects.

I’ve submitted a patch to the ZenTest project which addresses both of these issues. Until the patch is applied, or the issues are addressed in some other way, you can apply it yourself to get autotest working with RSpec for Rails and other projects. These steps work on a mac. I assume that the commands are quite similar for Linux and Cygwin users.

Go to http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=419 and download ZenTest-3.5.2.tgz

Unpack the tar and

tar zxvf ZenTest-3.5.2.tgz
cd ZenTest-3.5.2

Get and install the patch

curl -O http://blog.davidchelimsky.net/files/ZenTest-3.5.2-rspec.patch
patch -p0 < ZenTest-3.5.2-rspec.patch

Build and install the gem

rake gem
sudo gem install pkg/ZenTest-3.5.2.gem

Once you’ve built and installed the patched gem, you run autotest as normal. Stand in the root of your project and say:

autotest

If you have a spec directory at the root of your project, autotest will load up rspec_rails_autotest for Rails projects and rspec_autotest for everything else.

To quote Josh Knowles, Happy (Auto)Specing!

"RSpec-0.9.1 and Autotest (ZenTest-3.5.2)" by David James

Sat, 12 May 2007 14:25:31 -0400

I’m running ZenTest (3.5.2) and I’m using rspec 0.9.5. I got an error when running autotest; here is the log:

$autotest
loading rspec_rails_autotest
spec --diff unified spec/models/spec/models/person_spec.rb ...
/opt/local/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27: command not found:  spec --diff unified spec/models/person_spec.rb

I guessed the fix pretty quickly. To run spec, I have to do `rake spec` or `script/spec`. Not just `spec`. So here is how I fixed the problem:

In my rspec_rails_autotest.rb, I noticed this line:

@spec_command = "spec --diff unified"

Changing it to this solved my problem:

@spec_command = "script/spec --diff unified"

Then, as mentioned in other places, I needed to install diff-lcs as well:

sudo gem install diff-lcs

Are others having the same problem? Did my fix work for you?

"RSpec-0.9.1 and Autotest (ZenTest-3.5.2)" by David James

Sat, 12 May 2007 14:24:49 -0400

I’m running ZenTest (3.5.2) and I’m using rspec 0.9.5. I got an error when running autotest; here is the log:

$autotest
loading rspec_rails_autotest
spec --diff unified spec/models/spec/models/person_spec.rb ...
/opt/local/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27: command not found:  spec --diff unified spec/models/person_spec.rb

I guessed the fix pretty quickly. To run spec, I have to do `rake spec` or `script/spec`. Not just `spec`. So here is how I fixed the problem:

In my rspec_rails_autotest.rb, I noticed this line:

@spec_command = "spec --diff unified"

Changing it to this solved my problem:

@spec_command = "script/spec --diff unified"

Then, as mentioned in other places, I needed to install diff-lcs as well:

sudo gem install diff-lcs

Are others having the same problem? Did my fix work for you?

"RSpec-0.9.1 and Autotest (ZenTest-3.5.2)" by David

Sun, 06 May 2007 23:52:14 -0400

Hussein – take a look at spec/spec.opts and get rid of everything related to—failures and—example. That should do the trick for the continuous run problem.

The coloring there is no solution for at the moment (that I am aware of).

"RSpec-0.9.1 and Autotest (ZenTest-3.5.2)" by Hussein Morsy

Thu, 03 May 2007 04:45:31 -0400

Thanks !

but i have two problem/questions: 1. If a example fails, autotest repeats the the execution of the failed example continiously.( although i didn’t change any file)

2. How to enable synstax coloring ?

"RSpec-0.9.1 and Autotest (ZenTest-3.5.2)" by Matt Aimonetti

Tue, 01 May 2007 23:33:19 -0400

Thanks!

"RSpec-0.9.1 and Autotest (ZenTest-3.5.2)" by Josh Knowles

Tue, 01 May 2007 12:21:59 -0400

Nice work, thanks!