RSpec does Autotest

I finally got around to updating to the latest version of RSpec and got it working with Rails and Autotest thanks to a helpful post by Robby On Rails.

But there were a couple of little things that tripped me up:

1. You must match the versions of the rspec_for_rails plugin with your version of RSpec.
2. The path structure for 0.7.5.1 has changed from the previous paths. It's now found at svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/rspec/tags/REL_0_7_5_1/
rspec_on_rails/vendor/plugins/rspec_on_rails
   (Don't know if this is a bug or not...)
   
3. The API has changed to align should_eql/should_equal with ruby's eql?/equal? - a bit different than what I'm used to with Test::Unit, but I suppose more Rubyish. (more info)
   

Also, running autotest against the spec server really helps with performance, which is key when you're doing test-first development.

Here's how you can automate that in a rake task:

1. Add your own task at lib/tasks/rspec_autotest.rake (I put it here so it doesn't get clobbered when I update the plugin):
   

   
   namespace :spec do
   
   task :autotest_server do
    require File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__),
      '../../vendor/plugins/rspec_autotest',
      'lib', 'rspec_autotest')
    autotest = RspecOnRailsAutotest.new
    autotest.spec_command = "drbspec --diff unified"
    autotest.run
   end
   end
   

   
   
2. Kick off the spec server:
   

   script/rails_spec_server

3. And start up autotest:
   

    rake spec:autotest_server

   
   

UPDATE:

Oh, and here's how I got autotest color to work with rspec. (Thanks for asking, Scott!)

First, I added this to ~/.autotest to load redgreen which comes with the lastest version of ZenTest.

require 'autotest/redgreen'

Second, I updated my copy of redgreen.rb at /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/ZenTest-3.4.3/lib/autotest/redgreen.rb
(your location may vary)

module Autotest::RedGreen
  BAR = "=" * 80
  RED = 31
  GREEN = 32
  
  Autotest.add_hook :ran_command do |at|
    if at.results.match /specification/
      #rspec
      at.results.gsub!(/^.* specifications?, (\d+) failures?$/) { |match|
        code = ($1 != "0") ? RED : GREEN
        match_string(code, BAR, match)
      }
    else
      at.results.gsub!(/^.* (\d+) failures, (\d+) errors$/) { |match|
        code = ($1 != "0" or $2 != "0") ? RED : GREEN
        match_string(code, BAR, match)
      }
    end
  end
  
  private
  
  def self.match_string(code, bar, match)
    "\e[#{code}m#{bar}\n#{match}\e[0m\n\n"
  end
end