From: "Adam P. Jenkins" <thorin@...>
Date: 2005-09-21T09:41:37+09:00
Subject: Re: MockFS 0.1.2

Daniel Sheppard wrote:
> Except for the fact that you can pretend you're talking to the entirety
> of the filesystem from the root directory, is there much use for this
> that wouldn't be met by running:
> 
> mount -t tmpfs tmpfs /somewhere

Well, tmpfs is Unix (Linux?) specific.  But I would think even if you 
care about portability, it would be a heck of a lot simpler to just 
write some code that ensures that your temp directory gets deleted when 
your test program exits.  Something like (untested code ahead):

require 'fileutils'
require 'tmpdir'

# Creates a temp directory in the system's temp directory, arranges
# for it to be deleted when the program exits, and returns the name
# of the new directory.
def create_temp_dir(prefix)
   # find a name that doesn't already exist
   idx = rand 10000
   dir = File.join(Dir.tmpdir, prefix, idx.to_s)
   loop do
     Dir.mkdir dir
     break
   rescue Errno::EEXIST => e
     idx += 1
     dir = File.join(Dir.tmpdir, prefix, idx.to_s)
   end

   # Arrange for dir to be deleted at program exit
   at_exit { FileUtils.rm_rf dir }
   dir
end

This way you're working with a real filesystem, and don't have to worry 
about your program behaving differently during testing due to 
differences between your mock filesystem implementation and a real 
filesystem.