Autotest ruby on rails with rspec

Question

I'm using autotest with ruby on rails. I have passing 2 passing tests when I run. rspec spec/; however, when I try to use autotest this is the output:

matt@matt-laptop:~/sample_app$ autotest
loading autotest/rails_rspec2
style: RailsRspec2
matt@matt-laptop:~/sample_app$

I get no output about the results of the tests. The same thing works with bundle exec autotest. I saw a post recommending autospec but that command is deprecated with rspec2. My Gemfile is

source 'http://rubygems.org'

gem 'rails', '3.0.5'
gem 'sqlite3-ruby', '1.3.2', :require => 'sqlite3'

group :development do
  gem 'rspec-rails', '2.5.0'
  gem 'autotest','4.4.4'
end

group :test do
  gem 'rspec', '2.5.0'
  gem 'webrat', '0.7.1'
  gem 'autotest', '4.4.4'
  gem 'redgreen', '1.2.2'
end

I have tried putting the .autotest config file in the root directory of my project as well as the home directory and neither makes a difference on the output. My .autotest file looks like this

#!/bin/ruby
require 'autotest/timestamp'

module Autotest::GnomeNotify
  def self.notify title, msg, img
    system "notify-send '#{title}' '#{msg}' -i #{img} -t 3000"
  end

  Autotest.add_hook :ran_command do |at|
    image_root = "~/.autotest_images"
    results = [at.results].flatten.join("\n")
    results.gsub!(/\\e\[\d+m/,'')
    output = results.slice(/(\d+)\sexamples?,\s(\d+)\sfailures?(,\s(\d+)\spending?|)/)
    full_sentence, green, failures, garbage, pending = $~.to_a.map(&:to_i)
  if output
    if failures > 0
      notify "FAIL", "#{output}", "#{image_root}/fail.png"
    elsif pending > 0
      notify "Pending", "#{output}", "#{image_root}/pending.png"
    else
      notify "Pass", "#{output}", "#{image_root}/pass.png"
    end
  end
 end
end

I've also checked that libnotify-bin is installed and functioning.

Answer 1

To get verbose results from rspec, create a .rspec file in your root project folder and write :

--format documentation

If i may, allow me to suggest watchr instead of autotest (with spork as well). Very easy to set up and very effective.

Take a look at

http://www.rubyinside.com/how-to-rails-3-and-rspec-2-4336.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RubyInside+%28Ruby+Inside%29

if you like.

Answer 2

I've had much the same problem with Autotest. I'm not certain, but I believe it may be very finicky about dependency versions. I'm a bit of a Rails noob, but since I so recently shared your troubles, let me show you what I did to fix the problem:

I was able to get it working by getting rid of all the code in the .autotest file and replacing it with:

require 'autotest/growl'
require 'autotest/fsevent'

To be clear, that second line should only apply if you're using OSX. I think you can safely get rid of all the "code" in your .autotest file because it relates to manual "red/green" growl notifications, which is no longer necessary once you have the "redgreen" gem installed. In short, you'll end up with a one or two line .autotest file.

Here are some files I installed via gem (some, like rspec-expectations, should be automatically installed as dependencies). The following files are the ones I believe should be relevant to your Autotest setup, the versions are the latest as of 10 minutes prior to writing this response.

• autotest (4.4.6, 4.3.2)
• autotest-fsevent (0.2.5, 0.2.2)
• autotest-growl (0.2.9, 0.2.4)
• autotest-rails-pure (4.1.2, 4.1.0)
• redgreen (1.2.2)
• rspec-core (2.5.1, 2.0.0.beta.18)
• rspec-expectations (2.5.0, 2.0.0.beta.18)
• rspec-mocks (2.5.0, 2.0.0.beta.18)
• rspec-rails (2.5.0, 2.0.0.beta.18)
• spork (0.8.4)
• webrat (0.7.3)
• ZenTest (4.5.0)

Do a gem list command to see which ones you have installed. It might be a simple matter of updating your versions and simplifying your .autotest file (I have mine in my home directory, if you care about location). Also, don't forget that the autotest-fsevent file only applies to OSX.

P.S. You'll probably STILL end up with unexplained autotest errors unless you put some additional code at the very end of your spec/controllers/spec_helper.rb file:

# Webrat configuration
Webrat.configure do |config|
config.mode = :rails
end