Ruby Test

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Description

Ruby Test is a universal test harness for Ruby developers. It can be used by any Ruby test framework. You can think of Ruby Test as a meta test framework. Ruby Test defines a straight-forward specification that any test framework can utilize as it back-end. This makes it almost trivial to implement new test frameworks. Ruby Test further allows tests from various frameworks to all run through a single uniform user interface in a single pass.

Specification

The universal access point for testing is the $TEST_SUITE global array. A test framework need only add compliant test objects to $TEST_SUITE. Ruby Test will iterate through these objects. If a test object responds to #call, it is run as a test procedure. If it responds to #each it is iterated over as a test case with each entry handled in the same manner. All test objects must respond to #to_s so their description can be used in test reports.

Ruby Test handles assertions with BRASS compliance. Any raised exception that responds to #assertion? in the affirmative is taken to be a failed assertion rather than simply an error. A test framework may raise a NotImplementedError to have a test recorded as todo --a pending exception to remind the developer of tests that still need to be written. The NotImplementedError is a standard Ruby exception and a subclass of ScriptError. The exception can also set a priority level to indicate the urgency of the pending test. Priorities of -1 or lower will generally not be brought to the attention of testers unless explicitly configured to do so.

That is the crux of Ruby Test specification. Ruby Test supports some additional features that can makes its usage even more convenient. See the Wiki for further details.

Installation

Ruby Test is available as a Gem package.

$ gem install rubytest

Ruby Test is compliant with Setup.rb layout standard, so it can also be installed in an FHS compliant fashion if necessary.

Running Tests

There are a few ways to run tests.

Via Runner Scripts

Out of the box Ruby Test doesn't provide any special means for doing so, you simply write you own runner script using the Ruby Test API. Here is the basic example:

require 'rubytest'

Test.run! do |r|
  r.loadpath 'lib'
  r.test_files 'test/test_*.rb'
end

Put that in a test/runner.rb script and run it with ruby or add #!/usr/bin/env ruby at the top and put it in bin/test setting chmod u+x bin/test. Either way, you now have your test runner.

Via Command-line Tool

Probably the easiest way to run tests is via the command line tool available via the rubytest-cli plug-in. You can read more about it on its webpage, but we will quickly go over it here.

The basic usage example is:

$ rubytest -Ilib test/test_*.rb

The command line tool takes various options, most of which correspond directly to the configuration options of the Test.run/Test.configure API. Use -h/--help to see them all.

If you are using a build tool to run your tests, such as Rake or Ergo, shelling out to rubytest is a good way to go as it keeps your test environment as pristine as possible, e.g.

desc "run tests"
task :test
  sh "rubytest"
end

Via Rake Task

There is also a Rake plug-in that can be installed called rubytest-rake. Surf over to its webpage for details. A basic example in its case, add to ones Rakefile:

require 'rubytest/rake'

Test::Rake::TestTask.new :test do |run|
  run.requires << 'lemon'
  run.test_files = 'test/test_*.rb'
end

See the Wiki for more detailed information on the different ways to run tests.

Requirements

Ruby Test uses the ANSI gem for color output.

Because of the "foundational" nature of this library we will look at removing this dependency for future versions, but for early development the requirements does the job and does it well.

Development

Ruby Test is still a bit of a "nuby" gem. Please feel OBLIGATED to help improve it ;-)

Ruby Test is a Rubyworks project. If you can't contribute code, you can still help out by contributing to our development fund.

Reference Material

Copyrights

Made available according to the terms of the BSD-2-Clause license.

See LICENSE.txt for details.