In RSpec 2, how can I spawn off a process, run some examples and then kill that process?

Question

I am trying to run some functional test on a small server I have created. I am running Ruby 1.9.2 and RSpec 2.2.1 on Mac OS X 10.6. I have verified that the server works correctly and is not causing the problems I am experiencing. In my spec, I am attempting to spawn of a process to start the server, run some examples, and then kill the process running the server. Here is the code for my spec:

describe "Server" do
  describe "methods" do

    let(:put) { "put foobar beans 5\nhowdy" }

    before(:all) do
      @pid = spawn("bin/server")
    end

    before(:each) do
      @sock = TCPSocket.new "127.0.0.1", 3000
    end

    after(:each) do
      @sock.close
    end

    after(:all) do
      Process.kill("HUP", @pid)
    end

    it "should be valid for a valid put method" do
      @sock.send(put, 0).should == put.length
      response = @sock.recv(1000)
      response.should == "OK\n"
    end

    #more examples . . .

  end
end

When I run the spec, it appears that the before(:all) and after(:all) blocks are run and the server processes is killed before the examples are run, because I get the following output:

F

Failures:

  1) Server methods should be valid for a valid put method
     Failure/Error: @sock = TCPSocket.new "127.0.0.1", 3000
     Connection refused - connect(2)
     # ./spec/server_spec.rb:11:in `initialize'
     # ./spec/server_spec.rb:11:in `new'
     # ./spec/server_spec.rb:11:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

When I comment out the call to Process.kill, the server is started and the tests are run, but the server remains running, which means I have to go manually kill it.

It seems like I am misunderstanding what the after(:all) method is supposed to do, because it is not being run in the order I thought it would. Why is this happening? What do I need to do so that my specs

Answer 1

Are you sure the server is ready to accept connections? Maybe something like this would help:

before(:each) do
  3.times do
    begin
      @sock = TCPSocket.new "127.0.0.1", 2000
      break
    rescue
      sleep 1
    end
  end
  raise "could not open connection" unless @sock
end