Hello, good folk of rspec-users.
I’m writing my first Ruby ‘binary’ (i.e., a script meant to be used
as a standalone system command) and I’m wondering how to RSpec it.
(Caveat: With all of my other code I almost alwyas do BDD, but as this
was my first ‘binary’ and these were my first Trollop steps, I ended up
writing the code first.)
‘From inside’? This means turning most of the script into one (or few)
callable method(s) and then testing them; the idea of accomodating the
code to be easier to test seems to miss the point, though.
‘From outside’ (i.e., run it with Kernel#` and observe output and
side-effects)? This feels more like behaviour testing, and I’m leaning
towards it, but I have a gut feeling there might be another choice that
I’m missing…
– Shot
On Oct 25, 2008, at 8:08 am, Shot (Piotr S.) wrote:
‘From outside’ (i.e., run it with Kernel#` and observe output and
side-effects)? This feels more like behaviour testing, and I’m leaning
towards it, but I have a gut feeling there might be another choice
that
I’m missing…
Hi Shot
When I’ve written command-line tools, I’ve done exactly this. Use
Dir.tmpdir to give you a working space to hold any input/output files,
and call it with Kernel#` to capture its STDOUT.
Doing it this way proves your binary command works, because RSpec (or
Cucumber, which may be more appropriate here) is doing nothing you
can’t do in a shell yourself.
Ashley
–
http://www.patchspace.co.uk/
Ashley M.:
When I’ve written command-line tools, I’ve done exactly this. Use
Dir.tmpdir to give you a working space to hold any input/output files,
and call it with Kernel#` to capture its STDOUT.
Thanks a lot, Ashley! This is what I’m going to do, then. 
I’ve just finished watching Rick B.’s ‘flog << Test.new’
presentation¹ from Ruby Hoedown 2008, and the first part (past
the introduction) is about how he RSpeced the flog binary – also
most informative!
¹
http://rubyhoedown2008.confreaks.com/11-rick-bradley-flog-test-new.html
– Shot