Speeding up Slow Spork Startup for Rails 2.3+

If you noticed spork startup getting slower when switching to Rails 2.3, your not alone

• Views are eager loaded
• app/ is eager loaded (when config.cache_classes is on)

Without hack: 18s startup
With hack: 2s startup

Try it

#spec/spec_helper.rb
begin
  require 'spork/app_framework/rails'
  module Spork::AppFramework::Rails::NinjaPatcher
    # views are preloaded  spork must be restarted for view changes
    def delay_eager_view_loading
      puts "removed because i am too slow..."
    end

    # do not preload application files
    # alternatively urn off config.cache_classes
    def delay_app_preload
      ::Rails::Initializer.send(:define_method, :load_application_classes) do
      end
    end
  end
rescue
end

Spork.prefork do
  ...

Stop spec_helper from being loaded multiple times

If you got a big project, chances are spec_helper is required through different ways, File.expand_path / File.join() / … which results in it being loaded several times!

Try it:

#spec_helper.rb
print "YEP!"

rake spec -> “YEP!YEP!YEP!YEP!YEP!YEP!YEP!YEP!……”

So how to prevent it ?

Unify!
Unify it to ’spec/spec_helper’ which is dead-simple, can be copied without modification (like adding ‘../../’) and prevents duplicate spec_helper calls

#unify_spec_helper.rb
require 'rake'

files = FileList["spec/**/*_spec.rb"].reject{|file|File.directory?(file)}
files.each do |file|
  lines = File.readlines(file)
  lines = lines.map do |line|
    if line =~ /require.*spec_helper/
      "require 'spec/spec_helper'\n"
    else
      line
    end
  end
  File.open(file,'w'){|f| f.write lines.join('') }
end

Run: ruby unify_spec_helper.rb

How to Run Each Test or Spec One by One

On my new project we had the problem that some specs failed when ran on their own, and some specs produces strange output (like “use object_id”), so I build a helper that runs each test on its own and could pinpoint the problem.

rake spec:one_by_one

it is now included in the single test rails plugin

How Stop Autotest From Running After Each Failed Test Was Fixed

Autotest until recently only had one flaw: it could not be used for large test suites, since after each red-green cycle I had to wait x minutes for all tests to pass, which made autotest really frustrating.

So grep autotest (the ‘without ZenTest version’) from github and enjoy “autotest -c” (also works with auospec).

And remember kids: always run autospec with script/spec_server and its twice the fun

Cucumber vs ActiveRecord 2.3 — Attempt to call private method (NoMethodError)

All of the sudden some columns began to misbehave in cucumber tests, claiming that “Attempt to call private method (NoMethodError)” on normal column attributes!

A simple fix for this, essentially saying that a method is not private when its a column:

#features/support/ar_private_fix.rb required from env.rb
unless ActiveRecord::Base.methods.include?('private_method_defined_with_fix?')
  class ActiveRecord::Base
    class << self
      def private_method_defined_with_fix?(method)
        return false if columns_hash.keys.include?(method.to_s)
        private_method_defined_without_fix?(method)
      end
      alias_method_chain :private_method_defined?, :fix
    end
  end
end