From: Ryan Davis <ryand-ruby@...>
Date: 2010-09-27T05:59:05+09:00
Subject: Re: testing and requiring


On Sep 26, 2010, at 09:57 , Iain Barnett wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I have an app/gem dir structure looking like this:
> 
> appname (dir)
>  Rakefile
>  lib (dir)
>    appname.rb
>    appname (dir)
>      class1.rb
>      class2.rb
>  t (dir)
>    class1.t
>    class2.t

Please don't do this. You're not in perl/whatever anymore, you're in ruby. Idiomatic ruby projects name their test directories "test" (or "spec") and name the test files as "test/test_class1.rb" (or "test/class1_test.rb" in rails land).

> The appname.rb handles all the requires when the app is run.
> 
> In the rakefile I've got this task, which I can run as `rake test`:
> 
> # desc "Run basic tests"
> Rake::TestTask.new("test") { |t|
>  t.libs = [lib_dir, test_dir]
>  t.pattern = 't/*.t'
>  t.verbose = true
>  t.warning = true
> }

If you do things properly, you don't need to define your own TestTask. Projects like hoe or jeweler will do everything for you cleanly and automatically.

> I've a couple of questions. How do I require the classes so that I can run test files individually if needed - do I put the requires in the test files themselves, or perhaps the rakefile, but then what's the best method for working out the right path to the class files from wherever the test is being run?

If you want to be lazy, you have each test file require "appname" since it pulls in everything else. If you want to be a software engineer, you have each file require whatever it directly depends on, so test/test_class1.rb only requires "appname/class1".

> Secondly, since the classes are all wrapped by `module appname` does that mean the tests need to be wrapped in it too?

I generally do a 1:1 mapping between an implementation namespace and a test namespace such that X::Y::Z is tested by TestX::TestY::TestZ. autotest works this way to map test failures back to their implementations. Many people don't agree with me on this, but they're wrong :P. On the test side is a more arbitrary, but what I'd recommend is that you DO NOT infect your implementation namespace with your tests. Things can get messy that way.