How do I get autotest to work?

rubyonrails-talk
1

For the life of me, I can't get autotest to work. I should note that I am not using RVM, because I couldn't get it to work. I'm doing my development in VirtualBox so I can seamlessly switch from one setup to another.

I'm going through chapter 3 at railstutorial.org (http:// ruby.railstutorial.org/chapters/static-pages#sec:first_tests), and I can't get autotest to work.

As the instructions say, I gem installed autotest -v 4.4.6, autotest- rails-pure -v 4.1.2, ZenTest, and redgreen and git removed spec/views and spec/helpers. I used apt-get to install libnotify-bin.

I created the ~/.autotest file and downloaded the images to ~/.autotest_images as instructed at http://automate-everything.com/2009/08/gnome-and-autospec-notifications/ .

But no matter what I do, entering "bundle exec rspec spec/" gives me a LONG error message: /home/jhsu/rails_projects/sample_app/spec/controllers/ pages_controller_spec.rb:1:in `require': no such file to load -- spec_helper (LoadError)   from /home/jhsu/rails_projects/sample_app/spec/controllers/ pages_controller_spec.rb:1:in `<top (required)>'   from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.6.4/lib/rspec/core/ configuration.rb:419:in `load'   from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.6.4/lib/rspec/core/ configuration.rb:419:in `block in load_spec_files'   from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.6.4/lib/rspec/core/ configuration.rb:419:in `map'   from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.6.4/lib/rspec/core/ configuration.rb:419:in `load_spec_files'   from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.6.4/lib/rspec/core/ command_line.rb:18:in `run'   from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.6.4/lib/rspec/core/ runner.rb:80:in `run_in_process'   from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.6.4/lib/rspec/core/ runner.rb:69:in `run'   from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.6.4/lib/rspec/core/ runner.rb:11:in `block in autorun'

CONTENTS OF pages_controller_spec.rb: require 'spec_helper'

describe PagesController do

  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

The command "gem list --local" gives me: abstract (1.0.0) actionmailer (3.1.2, 3.0.11) actionpack (3.1.2, 3.0.11) activemodel (3.1.2, 3.0.11) activerecord (3.1.2, 3.0.11) activeresource (3.1.2, 3.0.11) activesupport (3.1.2, 3.0.11) addressable (2.2.6) arel (2.2.1, 2.0.10) autotest (4.4.6) autotest-rails-pure (4.1.2) builder (3.0.0, 2.1.2) bundler (1.0.21) diff-lcs (1.1.3) erubis (2.7.0, 2.6.6) heroku (2.14.0) hike (1.2.1) i18n (0.6.0, 0.5.0) json (1.6.1) launchy (2.0.5) mail (2.3.0, 2.2.19) mime-types (1.17.2) multi_json (1.0.3) nokogiri (1.5.0) polyglot (0.3.3) rack (1.3.5, 1.2.4) rack-cache (1.1) rack-mount (0.8.3, 0.6.14) rack-ssl (1.3.2) rack-test (0.6.1, 0.5.7) rails (3.0.11) railties (3.1.2, 3.0.11) rake (0.9.2.2) rdoc (3.11) redgreen (1.2.2) rest-client (1.6.7) rspec (2.6.0) rspec-core (2.6.4) rspec-expectations (2.6.0) rspec-mocks (2.6.0) rspec-rails (2.6.1) rubyzip (0.9.4) sprockets (2.1.1) sqlite3 (1.3.4, 1.3.3) term-ansicolor (1.0.7) thor (0.14.6) tilt (1.3.3) treetop (1.4.10) tzinfo (0.3.31) webrat (0.7.1) ZenTest (4.6.2)

2

check this out!–> http://ph7spot.com/musings/getting-started-with-autotest

3

Not really an answer to your question, but did you thought about using guard to get similar behaviour? Additionaly you could use guard-rails to automatically restart the server when ever it is needed.

You can get guard itself from github: <https://github.com/guard/guard&gt;

Also there is a growing list of guardscripts: <https://github.com/guard/guard/wiki/List-of-available-Guards&gt;

A list of scripts I often use: guard-rails:   <https://github.com/guard/guard/wiki/List-of-available-Guards&gt; guard-rspec:   <https://github.com/guard/guard-rspec&gt; guard-cucumber:   <https://github.com/guard/guard-cucumber&gt;

But probably you'll find your own combination of scripts in the list above?

Only thing I miss, would be conditional running of other guards. Actually it restarts the server if corresponding files where changed, independent from the outcome of guard-cucumber and guard-rspec.

Bye Norbert

4

Do you have spec/spec_helper.rb?