RSpec

RSpec Branching Strategy

2020-06-22T01:00:00+01:00

The short version

RSpec repositories will deprecate the use of master for the default branch name. We will wait for a consensus on the new name for the default branch, in particular what new default is chosen by Github.

If no other consensus is arrived at by 1st of August, master will be renamed main. At that point all development effort will be based off the new branch name, and use of master will illicit a warning on install / usage. All open PRs will be rebased.

The long version

RSpec’s source code is hosted on Github. By default git, and thus Github has historically used master as the name of the default, or main branch. This term has sat uneasily on the minds of the team and with the recent community led moves to eliminate this terminology from our technology stacks, we are going to follow suit and rename this branch.

We currently favour main as the new name (it has shared muscle memory with the old) but we also recognise that having community consensus around a default name is important as it reduces the amount of surprise encountered by developers. So we will wait for the community to settle on a new default name, in particular for Github to change their default, but if none has been announced by 1st August we will use main.

We already have other branches in use for stable versions (e.g. 3-9-maintenance) and they will be unaffected.

Some people will believe this is an inconvience because master is used for lots of things, but the term has its origins in the dominance of one person over another, in particular in slavery and this change is about being inclusive to all people.

Implications

We have always encouraged the use of our main branch for getting pre-release features before we release them as a group of gems, this means there are likely people using the master branch via their Gemfiles. We will deprecate master by means of notice in the documentation, and possibly a post install / on usage message from RSpec itself warning of the fact the branch will become stale and not be updated further. Additionally we will look at using branch protection rules preventing PRs against master from that date.

Steps we intend to take

Push master to main (or other new branch name).
Rebase all open PRs and update our builds.
Set the default to main (etc) for all RSpec repositories.
Push change deprecating master to master.
In the future (possibly when releasing RSpec 4) remove master.

RSpec Rails 4.0 has been released!

2020-05-27T01:00:00+01:00

RSpec Rails 4.0 has been released! Given our commitment to semantic versioning, this is a major release and as such contains breaking changes. The major change is that we’ve dropped support for Rails below 5, with only soft support for Rails 4.2.

As usual, if you notice any newly introduced bugs, please let us know, and we’ll release a fix for it ASAP.

RSpec continues to be a community-driven project with contributors from all over the world. This release includes 258 commits and 56 merged pull requests from 27 different contributors!

Thank you to everyone who helped make this release happen!

Notable Changes

Support for Rails 6, including support for testing ActionCable, ActiveMailbox.

Breaking changes

RSpec Rails 4 only supports Rails 5 and 6. This is in line with our new versioning policy which keeps major versions of RSpec Rails in lockstep with supported versions of Rails.

This means that we no longer support versions of Ruby below 2.2 in line with the versions of Ruby supported by Rails 5.

We have restricted the version of Rails for this version to 4.2 to allows a “soft support” for Rails 4.2 during this interim period but we strongly urge you to upgrade Rails to use 4.0.0.

Removed version lock with RSpec gems

The rspec-rails gem is no longer locked with the versioning of the other RSpec gems, we will now be releasing rspec-rails with each new Rails release, keeping in lockstep with their supported major versions.

Improved JRuby support

We have improved JRuby support and RSpec Rails 4 fully supports JRuby on Rails 5 and 6.

Support for Action Cable

We now support channel specs in order to easily test your Action Cable channels. A channel spec pulls in ActionCable::Channel::TestCase, including all of the behavior and assertions that it provides, in addition to RSpec’s own behavior and expectations.

Support for Action Mailbox

Rails 6 adds Action Mailbox for dealing with inbound emails. RSpec Rails 4 adds support for mailbox specs using the Rails test helpers for mailboxes.

For example using the Rails test helper, process and the have_been_delivered matcher:

RSpec.describe InboxMailbox, type: :mailbox do
  it "marks email as delivered when number tag in subject is valid" do
    mail = Mail.new(
      from: "replies@example.com",
      subject: "[141982763] support ticket"
    )
    mail_processed = process(mail)

    expect(mail_processed).to have_been_delivered
  end
end

Improvements to generators

If you use generators, there are some improvements: - The default hash syntax is now the Ruby 1.9 style in generated files to match Rails conventions - Request specs are generated instead of controller specs by default - New generators available (channel, generator, mailbox…)

Allow configuring Active Job `queue_adapter` in system specs

Some people want to run Active Job with a specific queue adapter. In system specs you can now choose your desired queue adapter:

before do
  ActiveJob::Base.queue_adapter = :inline
end

Silence log output with Puma

By default, Puma will no longer print logs when running system specs.

Ability to manually turn off Active Record support

When using Rails without ActiveRecord or using an alternative ORM or a database of choice, e.g. Sequel, ROM, Mongoid etc. We can mistakenly detect ActiveRecord as being used due to other gems autoloading the constants, we now support manually turning off Active Record support when not configured with: config.use_active_record = false

Stats:

Total Commits: 285
Merged pull requests: 63
31 contributors: Andrew White, Anton Rieder, Benoit Tigeot, Jon Rowe, David Revelo, Giovanni Kock Bonetti, Ignatius Reza, James Dabbs, Joel AZEMAR, John Hawthorn, Jonathan Rochkind, Kieran O'Grady, Marc-André Lafortune, Moshe Kamensky, OKURA Masafumi, Olle Jonsson, Pedro Paiva, Penelope Phippen, Phil Pirozhkov, Piotr W, Seb Jacobs, Tanbir Hasan, Viacheslav Bobrov, Vladimir Dementyev, Xavier Shay, alpaca-tc, pavel, ta1kt0me, yalab

Docs

API Docs

rspec-rails

RSpec

RSpec Branching Strategy

The short version

The long version

Implications

Steps we intend to take

RSpec Rails 4.0 has been released!

Notable Changes

Breaking changes

Removed version lock with RSpec gems

Improved JRuby support

Support for Action Cable

Support for Action Mailbox

Improvements to generators

Allow configuring Active Job queue_adapter in system specs

Silence log output with Puma

Ability to manually turn off Active Record support

Stats:

Docs

API Docs

Cucumber Features

Release Notes

4.0.1 / 2020-05-16

4.0.0 / 2020-03-24

RSpec 3.9 has been released, and RSpec team changes.

Notable Changes

Core: Improved error handling

Core: Command Line Interface improvement, --example-matches

Core: New Formatter

Expectations: respond_to(:new)

Expectations: Empty diff warning

Mocks: Improved thread safety

Rails: rails_helper.rb improvements

Rails: New email matchers

Rails: New generators

Stats:

Combined:

rspec-core:

rspec-expectations:

rspec-mocks:

rspec-rails:

rspec-support:

Docs

API Docs

Cucumber Features

Release Notes

rspec-core-3.9.0

rspec-expectations-3.9.0

rspec-mocks-3.9.0

rspec-rails-3.9.0

Jon Rowe and Sam Phippen are RSpec's new leads

RSpec 3.8 has been released!

Notable Changes

Core: Performance of –bisect has been significantly improved

Core: Support the XDG base directory spec for configuration

Expectations: Formatted output length is now configurable

Rails: have_http_status matcher upgraded to support Rails 5.2

Rails: View specs stub_template performance improved.

Rails: rails_helper.rb improvements

Stats:

Combined:

rspec-core:

rspec-expectations:

rspec-mocks:

rspec-rails:

rspec-support:

Docs

API Docs

Cucumber Features

Release Notes

rspec-core-3.8.0

rspec-expectations-3.8.0

rspec-mocks-3.8.0

rspec-rails-3.8.0

rspec-support-3.8.0

RSpec 3.7 has been released!

Notable Changes

Rails: ActionDispatch::SystemTest integration (System specs)

Stats:

Combined:

Allow configuring Active Job `queue_adapter` in system specs

Core: Command Line Interface improvement, `--example-matches`

Rails: `rails_helper.rb` improvements

Rails: `have_http_status` matcher upgraded to support Rails 5.2

Rails: View specs `stub_template` performance improved.

Rails: `rails_helper.rb` improvements

Rails: `ActionDispatch::SystemTest` integration (System specs)