RunningMan

Provides a simple way of setting up setup/teardown blocks that execute just once for the entire test case.

class MyTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  class << self
    attr_accessor :block
  end

  self.block = RunningMan::Block.new do
    # something expensive
  end

  def setup
    self.class.block.run(self)
  end
end

This looks much better in something like ActiveSupport::TestCase, where a #setup method takes a block.

class MyTest < ActiveSupport::TestCase
  block = RunningMan::Block.new do
    # something expensive
  end

  setup { block.run(self) }
end

You can also extend your test case class with helper methods to make this look nicer.

RunningMan.setup_on ActiveSupport::TestCase
class MyTest < ActiveSupport::TestCase
  setup_once do
    # something expensive
  end
end

ActiveRecord!

The use case for RunningMan is for database testing in my Rails apps. RunningMan gives me a setup where on each test case, we:

Clear the database
Load the fixtures
Run the tests

It's not entirely unlike Rails' default fixture behavior, but there are a few important subtleties:

Fixtures are not loaded into the DB for each test - instead they are loaded once for each test class and shared amongst the tests.
Each test class has its own set of fixtures. Adding or removing fixtures to a test class will not break other tests in strange and mysterious ways.

This has been tested on Ruby 1.8.7/ActiveRecord 2.2 and Ruby 1.9/ActiveRecord 3.0 beta 3.

RunningMan.setup_on ActiveSupport::TestCase, :ActiveRecordBlock
class MyTest < ActiveSupport::TestCase
  fixtures do
    @post = Post.make # <3 Machinist
  end

  test "check something on post" do
    assert_equal 'foo', @post.title
  end

  test "delete post" do
    @post.destroy
  end
end

Note on Patches/Pull Requests

Fork the project.
Make your feature addition or bug fix.
Add tests for it. This is important so I don’t break it in a future version unintentionally.
Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.