# Problem with test:units:rcov **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [April 24, 2007, 10:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problem-with-testrcov/92799 "2007-04-24T10:40:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![stickstone](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/6f9a4e/32.png) [@stickstone](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/stickstone)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2007, 10:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problem-with-testrcov/92799/1 "2007-04-24T10:40:59Z")
I’m posting this problem here as I’m not sure whether it’s to do with rcov, rails\_rcov, rails, rake, or my own application 🙂 I had rails\_rcov working perfectly last week. Now when I try it again on the current iteration of the same project, it bombs out: $ rake --trace test:units:rcov (in /home/candlerb/svn/dev/projects/deploy2/trunk) \*\* Invoke test:units:rcov (first\_time) \*\* Invoke test:units:clobber\_rcov (first\_time) \*\* Execute test:units:clobber\_rcov rm -rf ./coverage/units \*\* Execute test:units:rcov /usr/bin/ruby1.8 “/home/candlerb/svn/dev/projects/deploy2/trunk/vendor/plugins/rails\_rcov/tasks/rails\_rcov.rake” –run-rake-task=test:units (in /home/candlerb/svn/dev/projects/deploy2/trunk) rake aborted! undefined method `exclude' for nil:NilClass /home/candlerb/svn/dev/projects/deploy2/trunk/Rakefile:10 (See full trace by running task with --trace) rake aborted! Command failed with status (1): [/usr/bin/ruby1.8 "/home/candlerb/svn/dev/p...] /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:719:in `sh’ /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:726:in `sh' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:805:in `sh’ /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:800:in `sh' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:740:in `ruby’ /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:805:in `ruby' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:800:in `ruby’ /home/candlerb/svn/dev/projects/deploy2/trunk/config/…/vendor/plugins/rails\_rcov/tasks/rails\_rcov.rake:83:in `new_rcov_task' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:392:in `execute’ /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:392:in `execute' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:362:in `invoke’ /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/thread.rb:135:in `synchronize' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:355:in `invoke’ /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:1739:in `top_level' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:1739:in `top\_level’ /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:1761:in `standard_exception_handling' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:1733:in `top\_level’ /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:1711:in `run' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:1761:in `standard\_exception\_handling’ /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb:1708:in `run’ /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/bin/rake:7 /usr/bin/rake:16 However, the unit tests by themselves are just fine (rake test:units) Now, several things have changed since rcov was last working. I’ve made a lot of changes to the application itself - but as I say, the tests are still passing. I’ve also done a gem update to get from rails 1.2.2 to 1.2.3, which means I have various different versions of things lying around: $ ls /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/ actionmailer-1.3.2 cgi\_multipart\_eof\_fix-2.1 rails-1.2.3 actionmailer-1.3.3 daemons-1.0.5 rake-0.7.1 actionpack-1.13.2 fastthread-1.0 rake-0.7.3 actionpack-1.13.3 flexmock-0.5.0 rcov-0.8.0.2 actionwebservice-1.2.2 gem\_plugin-0.2.2 rubyforge-0.4.0 actionwebservice-1.2.3 haml-1.0.5 RubyInline-3.6.2 activerecord-1.15.2 hoe-1.2.0 sources-0.0.1 activerecord-1.15.3 mongrel-1.0.1 xml-simple-1.0.11 activesupport-1.4.1 mongrel\_cluster-0.2.1 zentest-3.5.0 activesupport-1.4.2 rails-1.2.2 However I tried setting RAILS\_GEM\_VERSION=‘1.2.2’ in config/environment.rb but this made no difference. The rails\_rcov version is -r12 from subversion. $ svn propget svn:externals vendor/plugins/ rails\_rcov [http://svn.codahale.com/rails\_rcov](http://svn.codahale.com/rails_rcov) $ svn update Fetching external item into ‘vendor/plugins/rails\_rcov’ External at revision 12. Now, what’s annoying is that there is no filename or line number to identify where the “undefined method `exclude’ for nil:NilClass” exception occured, except /home/candlerb/svn/dev/projects/deploy2/trunk/Rakefile:10 which is just ``` require 'tasks/rails' ``` Anyone got any ideas how I can narrow this down? Thanks, Brian. ---
**Author:** ![stickstone](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/6f9a4e/32.png) [@stickstone](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/stickstone)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2007, 2:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problem-with-testrcov/92799/2 "2007-04-24T14:19:38Z")
On Tue, Apr 24, 2007 at 05:39:57PM +0900, Brian C. wrote: > I had rails\_rcov working perfectly last week. Now when I try it again on the > current iteration of the same project, it bombs out: This turns out to be an extremely weird problem. Firstly I made the following change to rails-1.2.3/lib/tasks/rails.rb — rails.rb.orig 2007-04-21 21:24:18.000000000 +0100 +++ rails.rb 2007-04-24 12:23:01.000000000 +0100 @@ -4,5 +4,10 @@ Dir["#{File.dirname( **FILE** )}/\*.rake"].each { |ext| load ext } # Load any custom rakefile extensions +begin Dir["#{RAILS\_ROOT}/lib/tasks/**/\*.rake"].sort.each { |ext| load ext } Dir["#{RAILS\_ROOT}/vendor/plugins/**/tasks/\*\*/\*.rake"].sort.each { |ext| load ext } +rescue Exception =\> e +STDERR.puts “XXX #{e.message}\n#{e.backtrace.join(”\n")}" +raise +end (ISTM that rake should not be hiding this exception when I give --trace) This gives me the following error: XXX undefined method `exclude' for nil:NilClass /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake/clean.rb:19 /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in`require’ /home/candlerb/svn/dev/projects/deploy2/trunk/config/…/vendor/plugins/rails\_rcov/tasks/rails\_rcov.rake:30 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-1.2.3/lib/tasks/rails.rb:9 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-1.2.3/lib/tasks/rails.rb:9 /usr/local/lib/site\_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom\_require.rb:27:in `require' /home/candlerb/svn/dev/projects/deploy2/trunk/Rakefile:10 /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rake.rb:1641:in`load\_rakefile’ /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rake.rb:1713:in `run' /home/candlerb/svn/dev/projects/deploy2/trunk/vendor/plugins/rails_rcov/tasks/rails_rcov.rake:146 rake aborted! undefined method`exclude’ for nil:NilClass /home/candlerb/svn/dev/projects/deploy2/trunk/Rakefile:10 (See full trace by running task with --trace) Line 19 of rake/clean.rb is CLEAN.clear\_exclude.exclude { |fn| So it looks like CLEAN.clear\_exclude is returning nil. This is where it gets interesting. I had gems for both rake-0.7.1 and rake-0.7.3 installed. The code for clear\_exclude in rake-0.7.3 is ``` def clear_exclude @exclude_patterns = [] @exclude_procs = [] calculate_exclude_regexp if ! @pending self end ``` but in rake-0.7.1 it is ``` def clear_exclude @exclude_patterns = [] calculate_exclude_regexp if ! @pending end ``` and the latter clearly could return nil. I checked that nothing was referring to rake version 0.7.1 explicitly, but just to be on the safe side I uninstalled the rake-0.7.1 gem. However the problem remained. Next I made the following changes to rake: — gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb.orig 2007-04-24 12:47:03.000000000 +0100 +++ gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake.rb 2007-04-24 12:54:36.000000000 +0100 @@ -1084,10 +1084,12 @@ ``` # Clear all the exclude patterns so that we exclude nothing. def clear_exclude ``` +STDERR.puts “enter clear\_exclude” @exclude\_patterns = [] @exclude\_procs = [] calculate\_exclude\_regexp if ! @pending - ``` self ``` +STDERR.puts “exit clear\_exclude” - ``` return self ``` end # Define equality. — gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake/clean.rb.orig 2007-04-24 12:49:15.000000000 +0100 +++ gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake/clean.rb 2007-04-24 12:57:38.000000000 +0100 @@ -16,9 +16,13 @@ require ‘rake’ CLEAN = Rake::FileList[" **/\*~", "** /\*.bak", “\*\*/core”] -CLEAN.clear\_exclude.exclude { |fn| +STDERR.puts “AAA CLEAN=#{CLEAN.inspect}” +cce = CLEAN.clear\_exclude +STDERR.puts “cce = #{cce.inspect}” +cce.exclude { |fn| fn.pathmap("%f") == ‘core’ && File.directory?(fn) } +STDERR.puts “BBB” desc “Remove any temporary products.” task :clean do And here’s the result: $ rake test:units:rcov(in /home/candlerb/svn/dev/projects/deploy2/trunk) AAA CLEAN=[] enter clear\_exclude exit clear\_exclude cce = [] BBB rm -rf ./coverage/units /usr/bin/ruby1.8 “/home/candlerb/svn/dev/projects/deploy2/trunk/vendor/plugins/rails\_rcov/tasks/rails\_rcov.rake” –run-rake-task=test:units (in /home/candlerb/svn/dev/projects/deploy2/trunk) AAA CLEAN=[] cce = /^$/ XXX undefined method `exclude' for /^$/:Regexp /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake/clean.rb:22 /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in`require’ /home/candlerb/svn/dev/projects/deploy2/trunk/config/…/vendor/plugins/rails\_rcov/tasks/rails\_rcov.rake:30 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-1.2.3/lib/tasks/rails.rb:9 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-1.2.3/lib/tasks/rails.rb:9 /usr/local/lib/site\_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom\_require.rb:27:in `require' /home/candlerb/svn/dev/projects/deploy2/trunk/Rakefile:10 /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rake.rb:1641:in`load\_rakefile’ /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rake.rb:1713:in `run' /home/candlerb/svn/dev/projects/deploy2/trunk/vendor/plugins/rails_rcov/tasks/rails_rcov.rake:146 rake aborted! undefined method`exclude’ for /^$/:Regexp This proves that the gem installation of rake-0.7.3 is being run, but it is so weird that I cannot understand it at all. CLEAN.clear\_exclude now appears to be returning a regexp rather than nil. But look at the code - it can’t possibly be doing so! So finally I undid all those changes and made just this one: — gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake/clean.rb.orig 2007-04-24 12:49:15.000000000 +0100 +++ gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake/clean.rb 2007-04-24 13:00:38.000000000 +0100 @@ -16,7 +16,8 @@ require ‘rake’ CLEAN = Rake::FileList[" **/\*~", "** /\*.bak", “\*\*/core”] -CLEAN.clear\_exclude.exclude { |fn| +CLEAN.clear\_exclude +CLEAN.exclude { |fn| fn.pathmap("%f") == ‘core’ && File.directory?(fn) } and now everything works! The only theory I have to work on is that rcov breaks the Ruby interpreter in such a way that “return self” no longer works. However that’s a very wild theory, and I’ve not been able to replicate it in a small test case. Can anyone else think of a mechanism which would cause it to behave this way? Environment is Ubuntu 6.06, $ ruby -v ruby 1.8.4 (2005-12-24) [i486-linux] Regards, Brian.