RSpec collection without running tests

Question

Is there a way to trigger RSpec test case collection, but not run the tests?

In Python's pytest, the equivalent is appending a --collect-only switch.

My use case: I would like to run a hook that validates some metadata about our test cases, such as enforcing a mandatory tagging pattern, and I'd like to include this validation check as a PR check. The issue is, I don't really want the test suite to run, but I would only like to validate test case metadata.

Any help would be appreciated and thank you in advance!

Answer 1

There seems to be no built-in way to do collection only. Instead, I had to add the following in my spec_helper. Basically, skip the test if you pass in an environment variable CONTEXT=validate into your test run. Not really a great way to do this but it seems RSpec provides no built-in alternative:

  config.around(:each) do |example|
    # validate test case metadata. Ensure proper folder structure and team tagging
    # No need to run tests during validation, so they are skipped and left in 'pending' state
    if CONTEXT == 'validate'
      puts '[INFO] Skipping spec run and validating spec'
      example.skip
      validate_spec(example)
    else
      example.run
    end