Which testing technology to use for a command-line Ruby app? [closed]

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I have written a Ruby program that I would like to release as a Gem. It is built using Thor and command_line_reporter. I have been building it while learning, which for me means that I have no tests. Seeing as the community likes and expects tests, which I understand, I feel I should implement this before making the program public.

While this could be taken as asking for opinions, I feel there must be something that fits my specific needs much better than anything else.

Which testing technology should/can be used for a Thor-based Ruby CLI app?

More info: The app allows the user to create a list of their favorite programs with a few fields of accompanying info. It saves all data to a file in JSON format. This is my first complete program and I have never written any tests before.

Answer 1

Perhaps it might help to address HOW to write tests. There are lots of test frameworks, and lots of philosophies of how we should write tests but I try to keep it simple. I generally start with these:

• Test to see I got back nil or an object first.
• Test to see if the object is the right type.
• Test to see if mandatory attributes are set, then if they're the right types.

Once I've got those out of the way I'll start antagonizing the code, throwing out-of-bounds and evil values at it, forcing it to raise its exceptions if it's supposed to do that.

Then, as further use/testing reveal bugs I'd add specific tests to check to see those don't reappear as I screw around with the code. ("Code screwing-around" is gonna happen, so its important I know I didn't make the program go out in flames.)

ZenTest has the autotest command which looks for a change in your test files and runs the tests automatically. It makes it really easy to make sure I haven't borked things, because in a separate console window autotest will be doing its thing each time I save. It's a great-big safety net you'll get used to having very quickly. From the docs:

autotest is a continous testing facility meant to be used during development. As soon as you save a file, autotest will run the corresponding dependent tests.

Writing tests are a necessary evil. They'll double your code-writing load, but they're very important to start early and continue maintaining. Trying to add them later to a large code base is a major problem, causing too many apps to never have unit tests. Icky.

Answer 2

Overwhelmingly, the answer to this is "whatever you feel like."

TestUnit and RSpec are both widely used, but it ultimately boils down to whatever you feel fits the needs of your app the best.