TestOwl

Narrow Minded TestUnit/RSpec, Watchr and Growl Integration for Continuous Testing. TestOwl assumes you are running Rails and makes some guesses about what tests depend on what files. For instance, if you change model Foo then it looks for foo_test.rb and foos_controller_test.rb.

At the very least, it will run each test every time you save it.

Usage

From Rails root:

testowl

If you're using bundler then you should probably run:

bundle exec testowl

Dependencies

It uses growlnotifiy to send messages to Growl. If you don't have it installed then it will only write a message to your terminal. To get the full benefit of TestOwl you should definitely install growlnotify.

UPDATE: It now tries terminal-notifier first and uses that if it is present. The terminal-notifier gem will send messages to Mountain Lion's notification centre.

For example:

group :test do
  gem 'terminal-notifier'
  gem 'testowl'
end

Bundler

To install using Bundler:

group :test do
  gem 'testowl'
end

RSpec

TestOwl looks for spec/spec_helper.rb and if it finds it then it uses RSpec.

Test Unit

TestOwl looks for test/test_helper.rb and if it finds it then it uses Test Unit. Actually, it looks for RSpec first and only checks for Test Unit if it can't find RSpec.

Spork

Spork is a testing framework for RSpec and Cucumber (see below for use with Test Unit) that forks before each run to ensure a clean testing state. By preloading the Rails environment it speeds up the launch time to run tests. This is especially significant when running single, small tests.

If you are running Spork then it will use it (assuming it is on port 8988) but if it gets no response on that port then it will just run the tests directly.

To get it running you just:

$ bundle exec spork
Using TestUnit
Preloading Rails environment
Loading Spork.prefork block...
Spork is ready and listening on 8988!

Spork with RSpec

You need to tell RSpec to use Spork by running it with the --drb option. If you want to do that every time then you can add a file called .rspec to your project:

--drb

If Spork isn't running then RSpec will just run the specs directly.

Tip: if you prefer full output instead of just dots then you can use -f d and I always like some color too. My .rspec looks like this:

-f d --color --drb

Spork with Test Unit

Spork doesn't support Test Unit out of the box, but it does if you include the spork-testunit gem. This is what your Gemfile might look like

group :test do
  gem 'spork', "~> 0.9.0.rc"
  gem 'spork-testunit', :git => 'git://github.com/timcharper/spork-testunit.git'
  gem 'testowl', :git => "[email protected]:billhorsman/testowl.git"
end

To use Spork you then have to run your tests like this:

testdrb test/unit/foo_test.rb

TestOwl does that for you.

Todo

Make Drb port configurable
DSL to define relationship between changed files and tests to run.
Add some more rules for relationships (with or without DSL)