# Manual Testing

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/manual-testing/151402>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [October 21, 2008, 1:42am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/manual-testing/151402 "2008-10-21T01:42:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/aca169/32.png) [@scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/scudco)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 1:42am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/manual-testing/151402/1 "2008-10-21T01:42:30Z")

</div>

I’m trying to figure out a good way to incorporate manual testing into  
automated testing. I have a little snippet of what I’ve been working on  
at [7901’s gists · GitHub](http://gist.github.com/7901)

It basically assumes a manual test has a description and a series of  
steps. Steps can take blocks of code to be executed in the context of  
the test. I think this is a good start, but I haven’t been able to think  
of a good way to run manual tests by themselves or even in combination  
with automated tests. As you can see in the gist I tried using  
ENV[‘MANUAL’] but that will only work if the spec is part of a rake task  
since using ‘ruby’ or ‘spec’ will attempt to gobble up the environment  
variable assignment:

$ rake spec MANUAL=true ← works  
$ ruby foo.rb MANUAL=true ← FAIL  
$ spec foo.rb MANUAL=true ← FAIL

So if anyone has any insights on how they’ve done manual testing or any  
inspiration(:D) from the gist please let me know.

Thanks,  
Adam

Note: I spiked this out a while back with the Moonit gem(which was for  
test::unit), but I was not happy with the results.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/aca169/32.png) [@scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/scudco)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 10:05am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/manual-testing/151402/2 "2008-10-21T10:05:16Z")

</div>

Adam A. wrote:

> since using ‘ruby’ or ‘spec’ will attempt to gobble up the environment  
> Thanks,  
> Adam
> 
> Note: I spiked this out a while back with the Moonit gem(which was for  
> test::unit), but I was not happy with the results.

Shameless plug: Check [http://patir.rubyforge.org/rutema](http://patir.rubyforge.org/rutema) for a way to  
organize the tests how you describe.  
The whole project started with the same requirements: a mix of automated  
and manual tests, so there is provision for such tests.  
Cheers,  
V.-

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/aca169/32.png) [@scudco](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/scudco)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 6:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/manual-testing/151402/3 "2008-10-28T18:30:51Z")

</div>

I released the gist as the horrible gem.

> **[GitHub - scudco/horrible: Horrible helps you integrate manual and automated...](https://github.com/scudco/horrible/)**
>
> Horrible helps you integrate manual and automated specs/tests - GitHub - scudco/horrible: Horrible helps you integrate manual and automated specs/tests