Faster TDD with Spork, Guard & Test::Unit

05 Apr 2012 | rails, guard, spork, test-unit, tdd, testing

Using spork and guard together is a great way to speed up the test feedback cycle. Having minimum latency between code changes and test output is a great productivity booster, and is especially useful for certain tasks such as Test Driven Development, fixing bugs or refactoring code.

Follow these steps to set up Spork & Guard in your Rails app with Test::Unit (steps can be easily adapted for RSpec).

1. Add the following gems to your Gemfile

group :test do
  gem 'spork-testunit'   # runs Test::Unit with spork
  gem 'guard-spork'      # runs spork with guard
  gem 'guard-test'       # runs Test::Unit with guard
end

2. Install and bootstrap guard and spork

$ bundle install
$ spork --bootstrap
$ guard init spork
$ guard init test

3. Edit your Guardfile (in Rails.root)

Note: The spork section needs to be above any other test sections in your Guardfile, because they are loaded in the order they are specified.

Add or remove watch expressions as you need to (see the guard docs for usage), but don't forget to add the :test_unit_env => {'RAILS_ENV' => 'test'} option to the spork section and the :drb => true option to the test section.

Example Guardfile:

guard 'spork', :test_unit_env => { 'RAILS_ENV' => 'test' }, :wait => 60 do
  watch('config/application.rb')
  watch('config/environment.rb')
  watch(%r{^config/environments/.+\.rb$})
  watch(%r{^config/initializers/.+\.rb$})
  watch('Gemfile')
  watch('Gemfile.lock')
  watch('test/test_helper.rb') { :test_unit }
end

guard :test, :drb => true, :cli => '--use-color=true' do
  watch(%r{^lib/(.+)\.rb$})     { |m| "test/#{m[1]}_test.rb" }
  watch(%r{^test/.+_test\.rb$})
  watch('test/test_helper.rb')  { "test" }

  # Rails example
  watch(%r{^app/models/(.+)\.rb$})    { |m| "test/unit/#{m[1]}_test.rb" }
  watch(%r{^app/controllers/(.+)\.rb$})  { |m| "test/functional/#{m[1]}_test.rb" }
  watch(%r{^app/views/(.+)/.+\.erb$})
                               { |m| "test/functional/#{m[1]}_controller_test.rb" }
  watch('app/controllers/application_controller.rb')
                                        { ["test/functional", "test/integration"] }
end

4. Edit your test/test_helper.rb

spork --bootstrap will have added Spork.prefork and a Spork.each_run blocks to your test_helper.rb. Read the instructions and move all your code in test_helper into one of these blocks. The more code you move to Spork.prefork the faster your tests will run.

Note: Having the line fixtures :all in your prefork block will load all your model classes (if they have fixtures) so be aware that changes to these classes will not be picked up until you reload spork. One way around this is to remove the fixtures :all line and instead require the fixtures you need in each test.

Example test_helper.rb:

require 'rubygems'
require 'spork'

Spork.prefork do
  # Loading more in this block will cause your tests to run faster. However,
  # if you change any configuration or code from libraries loaded here, you'll
  # need to restart spork for it take effect.

  # You typically want to place most of your (slow) initializer code in here, in
  # particular, require'ing any 3rd-party gems that you don't normally modify
  # during development.

  ENV["RAILS_ENV"] = "test"
  require File.expand_path('../../config/environment', __FILE__)
  require 'rails/test_help'

  class ActiveSupport::TestCase
    fixtures :all
  end
end

Spork.each_run do
  # The Spork.each_run block is run each time you run your specs.  In case you
  # need to load files that tend to change during development, require them here.
  # With Rails, your application modules are loaded automatically, so sometimes
  # this block can remain empty.

  # Note: You can modify files loaded *from* the Spork.each_run block without
  # restarting the spork server.  However, this file itself will not be reloaded,
  # so if you change any of the code inside the each_run block, you still need to
  # restart the server.  In general, if you have non-trivial code in this file,
  # it's advisable to move it into a separate file so you can easily edit it
  # without restarting spork.
end

5. Start up Guard

Now you're all ready to go. Run:

$ guard

to start up an instance of guard which will boot up spork and run all of your tests.

Now as soon as you make changes to any watched files, the relevant tests will run, super fast!

Guard tips and tricks

To run all of your tests, hit 'return' in the terminal running guard.
To pause guard, type 'p' (hit 'return' to resume).

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