autotest is a fantastic tool. If you’re not using it, you’re missing out on a large part of the joy that life has to offer.

Ryan Davis and Eric Hodel can stop reading this article now.

For everyone else,

Customizable File Watching With rstakeout!

Mike Clark wrote a ruby implementation of a tool to watch files, then run any arbitrary command.

I modified it to look for Test::Unit or rSpec output and pop up a growl notification also. (Apparently the original author of the Mac OS X native app also did the same.)

In any case, this is a really useful tool. Autotest won’t run in Test::Unit mode if you have a spec directory, but rstakeout can be told to run any command when files change. It’s not as smart as autotest (it won’t match the command to the name of the file that changed).

Download

Get rstakeout from one of my Subversion repositories.

http://svn.topfunky.com/public/scripts/rstakeout.rb

Usage

rstakeout "command to run" 'files to watch' 'more files to watch'

It’s most useful when you can use Ruby’s file globbing instead of the shell’s. If you do something like '**/*.rb', Ruby will recurse into all subdirectories. The shell will only go down a single directory, so quote the final arguments so they will be passed to Ruby.

Examples

Rerun a single unit test when the implementation or test file is saved:

rstakeout "ruby test/unit/user_test.rb" 'app/models/user.rb' 'test/unit/user_test.rb'

Run the unit tests when model files are saved:

rstakeout "rake test:units" 'app/models/*.rb' 'test/unit/*.rb'

Run a single functional test, then run flog and filter the output with grep. This will show if your code is becoming more complicated or less.

rstakeout "ruby test/functional/orders_controller_test.rb && \
           flog -a app/controllers/orders_controller.rb | \
           grep 'OrdersController#checkout'" 'app/**/*' 'test/**/*'

Loaded suite test/functional/orders_controller_test
Started
..............................
Finished in 3.536267 seconds.

30 tests, 74 assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors
OrdersController#checkout: (56.5)
OrdersController#checkout_with_google: (17.6)
OrdersController#checkout_with_paypal: (15.9)

Lather, rise, repeat with Heckle or any other testing tool.

I’m using this to generate PDF documents using my automated system for PeepCode Press.

rstakeout "ruby script/generate code_review" '**/*.textile'

I use a shell shortcut to reuse the previous command.

$ some --long shell command
$ rstakeout "!!" 'files/**/*'

Or with autotest…

Ryan Davis pointed out that you can do something similar with flog and autotest by hard-coding this into your ~/.autotest file:

Autotest.add_hook :green do |at|
  system "flog app/controllers/users_controller.rb | grep \\#update" 
end

Incomprehensible Statistics

For completeness:

rstakeout  = 73.7304101610032
autotest   = 909.440236256987
ratio = autotest / rstakeout
      = 12.3346694297654   # <-- zomg! look here!!!

# I have no idea what these numbers are here for,
# or what they mean.
ratio - Math::PI
= 9.19307677617561

target = autotest / Math::PI
= 289.483818093921

target - rstakeout
= 215.753407932918

A Year of PeepCode!

Somehow, it’s been a year of PeepCode!

Yes, I’ll stop these self-congratulatory posts soon. In the meantime, buy a 10-pack and get 2 free screencasts, or a 5-pack and get one free. Offer good through Friday, September 7.

And the first PeepCode Press PDF is now available for purchase in draft form. Rails Code Review is seventeen chapters of common mistakes in Rails apps, and examples of how to write better code instead.

Finally, I have about 15 PeepCode t-shirts that were printed with an experimental process. Early users have reported that the printing washes off after the first laundering. But hey, at least you’ll have a nice black t-shirt! I’ll send you one at my expense, anywhere in the world.

• Send an email to peepcode@topfunky.com with FREE SHIRT in the subject.
• Include your shirt size, and male or female
• Include your mailing address (which will only be used to send you the shirt)