One of the things that I've been forced to research was rspec (installation and configuration) in order to restore what I've already had. This is the motivation for this entry: document the way I consider useful to install and customize rspec with notifications, and reports, etc.
Install the gems
Assuming that you already have installed rails (http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/RailsOnUbuntu) and an application (let's called it myapp) suitable to use with rspec. In this context, we are going to install the ZenTest gem (which includes rspec & autotest):
gem install ZenTest
gem install diff-lcs
After that, You'll need to install both rspec and rspec-rails plugins within your Rails application. For that matter, you should check: github.com/dchelimsky/rspec-rails/wikis/home (where it shows the different procedures you should follow to install it depending on your version of Rails).After this step, you'll be able to run the autotest tool from the command line.
Configure autotest
Then in the myapp you have to create the configuration file .autotest:
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'autotest/redgreen'
def self.notify title, msg, img, pri='low', time=3000
`notify-send -i #{img} -u #{pri} -t #{time} '#{msg}'`
end
Autotest.add_hook :ran_command do |at|
results = [at.results].flatten.join("\n")
output = results.slice(/(\d+)\s+examples?,\s*(\d+)\s+failures?(,\s*(\d+)\s+not implemented)?(,\s*(\d+)\s+pending)?/)
folder = "~/Pictures/autotest/"
if output =~ /([123456789]|[\d]{2,})\sfailures?/
notify "FAIL:", "#{output}", folder+"rails_fail.png", 'critical', 10000
elsif output =~ /[1-9]\d*\spending?/
notify "PENDING:", "#{output}", folder+"rails_pending.png", 'normal', 10000
else
notify "PASS:", "#{output}", folder+"rails_ok.png"
end
end
This code hooks in the autotest evaluation process and invokes the command line utility notify-send with the result of the evaluation. It also uses this pictures within their notifications (that enhance the user experience):
 |  |  |
Configure Ubuntu notifiactions
Finally, you have to install the following package in your system:
sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin
This tool enable us to display pop-ups within Ubuntu's environment.
RSpec reports
Other important file for autotest is /spec.opts, which is located at myapp/spec:
#myapp/spec/spec.opts
--colour
--format html:doc/rspec_results.html
--format progress
--loadby mtime
--reverse
In this configuration I specify that I want autotest to keep running in the console and, at the same time, I want to generate the html report (rspec_results.html).
Run autotest & see results.
After you configure all that I mentioned, you are able to execute the utility autotest from myapp directory and obtain the following results:
marcelo@host:~/workspace/myapp$ autotest
loading autotest/rails_rspec
/usr/bin/ruby1.8 -S script/spec -O spec/spec.opts spec/controllers/users_routing_spec.rb spec/views/users/show.html.erb_spec
...
This will generate the following output in the console:
You can also check the details results of doc/rspec_results.html in your browser:
