Getting Rspec + autotest working on windows

Question

I have installed growl + rspec + autotest on my windows 7 machine. From the command prompt, when I type 'rspec spec/' it doesn't work. The tests will only run if I use 'rake spec/' + 'autotest'.

Also, I am running these tests: http://railstutorial.org/chapters/static-pages#code:default_pages_controller_spec (i.e. very, very trivial) and they are taking 8.11 seconds.

They also fail when I run them - even though they don't in the example. I have done everything the tutorial told me, the problem is the tutorial doesn't go too deep into installing rspec on a Windows machine. It gives a link, but even then you have to kinda piece the instructions together.

The errors I get are 'Failure/Error: Unable to find C to read failed line [31mundefined methord get' for #<RSpec::Core::ExampleGroup::Nested_1::Nested_1:0x48336c0>'

The second error is very similar to that.

I have also installed Growl correctly, because I get a notification that there were two failures.

Can anyone help me?

Answer 1

I did a little googling, and according to this thread on the rspec ruby forum and this closed rspec-rails issue, this is an issue with rspec-rails that has been fixed.

I am running Ruby 1.9.2p136 on Windows 7 using rails 3.0.3.

This is what my Gemfile looked like, which shows the versions of rspec and rspec-rails that I was using:

source 'http://rubygems.org'

gem 'rails', '3.0.3'
gem 'sqlite3-ruby', :require => 'sqlite3'

group :development do
  gem 'rspec-rails', '2.4.1'
end

group :test do
  gem 'rspec', '2.4.0'
  gem 'webrat', '0.7.1'
end

I say "lookED like" because when I tried to run the rspec rails generator, this is what I got:

C:\Ruby\sample_app>rails generate rspec:install
  create  .rspec
  create  spec
  create  spec/spec_helper.rb
Could not find "autotest" in any of your source paths. Your current source paths
 are:
C:/Ruby/sample_app/lib/templates/rspec/install
C:/Ruby/192-stackoverflow/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-rails-2.3.0/lib/generators/rspec/install/templates

So then I added autotest to my Gemfile (and did bundle install again), then tried rails generate rspec:install again and it worked with no errors. So this is what my Gemfile looks like now:

source 'http://rubygems.org'

gem 'rails', '3.0.3'
gem 'sqlite3-ruby', :require => 'sqlite3'

group :development do
  gem 'autotest'
  gem 'rspec-rails', '2.4.1'
end

group :test do
  gem 'rspec', '2.4.0'
  gem 'webrat', '0.7.1'
end

And the version of autotest that this installs is 4.4.6:

C:\Ruby\sample_app>bundle show autotest
C:/Ruby/192-stackoverflow/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/autotest-4.4.6

I then created the controller as instructed in the tutorial:

$ rails generate controller Pages home contact

And I was able to run both "bundle exec autotest" and "rspec spec/" without getting the error you are seeing:

C:\Ruby\sample_app>bundle exec autotest
loading autotest/rspec2
bundle exec C:\Ruby\192-stackoverflow\bin\ruby -S C:/Ruby/192-stackoverflow/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.4.0/bin/rspec --tty 'C:/Ruby/sample_app/spec/controllers/pages_controller_spec.rb'
..

Finished in 23.04 seconds
2 examples, 0 failures
# I killed autotest with CTRL-c at this point
Interrupt a second time to quit
Terminate batch job (Y/N)? y
Terminate batch job (Y/N)? y


C:\Ruby\sample_app>rspec spec/
..

Finished in 23.11 seconds
2 examples, 0 failures

I also continued on with the tutorial, writing specs for the About page, while autotest was running and it was running on my changes without any problems.

So please try:

1. Updating your Gemspec to look similar to my 2nd one posted here
2. Running 'bundle install'
3. Running 'bundle exec autotest'

and let me know if that works. I will be checking back!

Answer 2

I thought that this might help those who might be having trouble now that all the gems have been updated quite a bit (especially for those using Ruby on Rails 3 tutorial):

I was able to get this working using the latest versions of all gems:

My Gemfile:

source 'https://rubygems.org'

gem 'rails', '3.2.6'
gem 'jquery-rails'

gem 'sqlite3', :group => [:development, :test]
gem 'pg', :group => :production #This is so Heroku will work

group :development do
  gem 'rspec-rails'
end

group :test do
  gem 'rspec'
  gem 'webrat'
  gem 'spork-rails'  #Use this is only if you want to use spork
end

Make sure you clean up rspec if you've already got an older version (by using the Ruby on Rails 3 tutorial, for example): https://stackoverflow.com/a/4433217/911133

To use autotest follow the directions here: https://github.com/svoop/autotest-growl

Note that installing growl-for-windows is part of that deal and snarl is not needed: http://www.growlforwindows.com/

Your .autotest file can be in one of two places

1) your HOME directory, which is (example):

C:\users\joeblow\.autotest

2) the rails application root (this will then operate for that app only)

my .autotest file looks like this:

require 'autotest/growl'
require 'autotest/restart'
require 'autotest/timestamp'

Autotest.add_hook :initialize do |autotest|
  autotest.add_mapping(%r%^spec/(requrests)/.*rb$%) do
|filename, _|
filename
end
end

Autotest::Growl::clear_terminal = false

Make sure you've done a 'bundle install'

Then run Growl for windows (start menu or start on windows boot)

run autotest in the command line and you should be good to go!

c:\users\joeblow\workspace\Rails\MyRailsProject> autotest

Answer 3

I've not found a permanent fix that works yet, but apparently it boils down to a path issue - something is munging the windows path and it breaks. However, there's a work around:

Within your describe, before the 'get' call, put this:

include RSpec::Rails::ControllerExampleGroup

Here's sample code using a generated Rails spec for a controller. Note that it's at the beginning of the scope:

require 'spec_helper'

describe PagesController do
  include RSpec::Rails::ControllerExampleGroup

  describe "GET 'home'" do
    it "should be successful" do
      get 'home'
      response.should be_success
    end
  end

  describe "GET 'contact'" do
    it "should be successful" do
      get 'contact'
      response.should be_success
    end
  end

end

There's a fix I've seen that suggests a change to spec_helper (in the Rails case), but I couldn't get it to work.

EDIT: A bit more research reveals this is a problem with autospec - this work around will work if you're just using rspec, but will not work with autotest. I've not been able to find a solution for this, however.