Testing on the Ruby track

Running Tests

Execute the tests with:

$ ruby hamming_test.rb

Only the first test will be executed, all the others have been made pending using the skip method. Delete or comment the next skip as you get each test passing.

Understanding Skips

The skip method instructs the test suite to not run a test. This is commonly used to avoid running tests of unimplemented functionality, so you can focus on the part you are currently working on.

The test run summary will list the number of skipped tests. You should disable all of the skips before completing an exercise.

Customizing Test Reporting

If you want color, execute the tests with:

$ ruby hamming_test.rb -p

If you want to see the test names, execute the tests with:

$ ruby hamming_tests.rb -v

If you would like to run only one test, you can specify one or a group with regular expression style matching.

$ ruby hamming_tests.rb -n /empty/

You can combine the options as well.

Disabling All The Skips

With your new found powers of being able to select the individual or groups of tests that you want to run, you may want to disable all the skips.

The Quick and Dirty

Taking advantage of the fact that in Ruby methods are overridable, if you were to add this line of code;

def skip ; end

like this in the Hamming test file

class HammingTest < Minitest::Test
  def skip ; end
  def test_identical_strands

then all the skips will still evaluate, yet will let your tests run.

The Still Quick And Cleaner

Of course, editing all the files through time can be irritating, so you could do like we did in developing the exercises... make a file that has the skip definition in it, and require that as a library when we want it.

We created a lib folder to keep our "helper" things in, and it looks like this:

require 'minitest/autorun'
# You can use this to disable all skips in the current exercise by issuing the
# following command:
#     ruby -I../lib -rdisable_skip <filename_test.rb>

module Minitest
  class Test
    def skip(_msg='', _bt=caller)
    end
  end
end

The description on how to use it is commented in that file listing, and the file listing is in its complete state.