Hello,
I’ve been trying to google the definitive way to combine autotest,
rspec, and spec-server, but to no avail. It seems like there are lots
of suggestions from old versions. Furthermore, some commands such as
rake:autotest don’t seem to be around anymore.
So, is it required to install ZenTest as a gem? I have version 3.9.1.
I believe this gets me the autotest command that I can issue on the
command line.
Must I install rspec as a gem? At first, I tried to not install it as
a gem and followed the instructions from http://rspec.info/
documentation/rails/install.html. I installed rspec as a plugin to my
Rails project and used just rake spec, but found that unless I
install rspec as a gem, there is no spec command for the command
line. That might make it easier to run my specs with options. So, I
installed rspec 1.1.3 as a gem. That provided me with the spec
command that I can issue on the command line.
What is the recommended way to start the spec-server? ./script/
spec_server or rake:spec:server:start? I’ve tried both and cannot
discern the differences.
Finally, what is the recommended way to run my specs? spec -O spec/
spec.opts spec/XXX or rake spec:XXX ? I’ve edited spec.opts to
include --drb on the first line. The rake method didn’t seem to use
the spec-server, despite this suggestion. So, I’ve tried the spec
command above. It still didn’t seem to use spec-server. However, when
I use spec -X -O spec/spec.opts, it does seem to use the spec_server.
I’m glad I’m able to finally use the spec_server, but it’s a real
drag switching back to my command line to issue this command after
every save. That’s exactly why I want to run autotest.
What is the recommended way to run autotest? autotest or rake
spec:autotest (I’ve seen this on google, but the command itself no
longer appears when I run rake -T spec. Is there something wrong with
my setup? Am I supposed to have a rake task for this or is it
deprecated). Without an available rake task, I am forced to try the
autotest command. However, I don’t think that the autotest command
accepts any options that tell it to use the spec_server. I tried
autotest -X, and of course, my spec.opts file does already say --drb
in the first line.
As you can see, I am really confused because there are at least 2
ways to do everything, and I haven’t been able to try every combination.
I’ve also noticed that autotest no longer runs the entire test suite
after a red-green cycle. I actually liked this behavior, but all I
could find was David C.'s blog on how to de-activate the
behavior. Why has it changed? Can it be restored?
If it helps, I’m running on Mac OS X 10.4.11, ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24
patchlevel 111) [powerpc-darwin8.11.0]
Thanks for your help!
-Anthony