Spex

A quick and dirty test harness for testing assertions before and after an executable is run.

Synopsis

Spex is a simple language used to define scenarios that model the correct behavior of an executable.

The description file consists of exactly one command line and any number of scenario definitions; for example, the following file can be used to verify running touch /tmp/foo will create a new file:

scenario "Creates a file" do
  executing 'touch /tmp/foo' do
    assert '/tmp/foo', :created => true
  end
end

If this was in run_touch.rb, you could run this with spex:

$ spex run_touch.rb

You'll notice that this should pass the first time and fail on subsequent invocations -- because the assertion added by :created => true fails in the event a file exists before the command is run.

If you want to see what command and scenarios are defined in a file, use spex info, eg:

$ spex --describe run_touch.rb

Usage help

See the commandline help documentation:

$ spex --help

Examples

See the examples/ directory.

Assertions

See the wiki for the list of supported assertions.

To add an assertion, create a class that inherits from Spex::Assertion and implements all the neccessary methods. See Spex::Assertion and the currently defined assertions for examples.

Note: If you put your assertions in ~/.spex/assertions/*.rb, they'll automatically be loaded. If you create any interesting assertions, add them to the wiki!

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2010 Bruce Williams. See LICENSE for details.