No Growl Notifications with Rails Tutorial 3.2

Question

Michael Hartl's wonderful Rails Tutorial is now available for Rails 3.2. He continues to outline TDD and BDD using rspec and spork as he did in version 3.0 and adds guard in 3.2. In version 3.0, Hartl includes information about autotest and I was able to get the wonderful growl notifications working. In 3.2, however, he no longer includes autotest or much growl information. Guard is working nicely with spork but there's no notifications. I've ventured out on my own the last couple hours using Hartl's 3.0 and some blog posts but trying to get autotest to work still produces a "LoadError" and a growl notification "could not run tests." Super grateful for any thoughts. I'm on OS X 10.7.3. Here's what I did:

$ gem install autotest -v 4.4.6
$ gem install autotest-rails-pure -v 4.1.2
$ gem install autotest-fsevent -v 0.2.8
$ gem install autotest-growl -v 0.2.16

Gemfile

source 'https://rubygems.org'
gem 'rails', '3.2.3'
gem 'pg', '0.12.2'
group :development, :test do 
    gem 'rspec-rails', '2.9.0'
    gem 'guard-rspec', '0.5.5'
end

group :assets do
    gem 'sass-rails','3.2.4' 
    gem 'coffee-rails', '3.2.2'
    gem 'uglifier', '1.2.3' 
end
gem 'jquery-rails', '2.0.0'
group :test do
    gem 'capybara', '1.1.2'
    gem 'rb-fsevent', '0.4.3.1', :require => false
    gem 'growl', '1.0.3'
    gem 'guard-spork', '0.3.2'
    gem 'spork', '0.9.0'
end

~/.autotest

require 'autotest/growl'
require 'autotest/fsevent'
Autotest::Growl::show_modified_files = true
Autotest::Growl::one_notification_per_run = true
Autotest::Growl::clear_terminal = false
Autotest::Growl::hide_label = true

Autotest.add_hook :initialize do |autotest|
  autotest.add_mapping(/^spec\/requests\/.*_spec\.rb$/) do
    autotest.files_matching(/^spec\/requests\/.*_spec\.rb$/)
  end  
end

$ autotest

loading autotest/rails


      --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

/Users/[me]/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p194/bin/ruby -I.:lib:test -rubygems -e "%w[test/unit spec/requests/static_pages_spec.rb].each { |f| require f }"
/Users/[me]/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p194/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require': cannot load such file -- spec_helper (LoadError)
    from        /Users/[me]/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p194/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require'
    from    /Users/[me]/programing/rails/rdale_house/spec/requests/static_pages_spec.rb:1:in `<top (required)>'
    from /Users/[me]/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p194/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require'
    from /Users/[me]/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p194/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require'
    from -e:1:in `block in <main>'
    from -e:1:in `each'
    from -e:1:in `<main>'

spec/spec_helper.rb

require 'rubygems'
require 'spork'
#uncomment the following line to use spork with the debugger
#require 'spork/ext/ruby-debug'

Spork.prefork do
  # Loading more in this block will cause your tests to run faster. However,
  # if you change any configuration or code from libraries loaded here, you'll
  # need to restart spork for it take effect.

  # This file is copied to spec/ when you run 'rails generate rspec:install'
  ENV["RAILS_ENV"] ||= 'test'
  require File.expand_path("../../config/environment", __FILE__)
  require 'rspec/rails'
  require 'rspec/autorun'

  # Requires supporting ruby files with custom matchers and macros, etc,
  # in spec/support/ and its subdirectories.
  Dir[Rails.root.join("spec/support/**/*.rb")].each {|f| require f}

  RSpec.configure do |config|
    # ## Mock Framework
    #
    # If you prefer to use mocha, flexmock or RR, uncomment the appropriate line:
    #
    # config.mock_with :mocha
    # config.mock_with :flexmock
    # config.mock_with :rr
    config.mock_with :rspec

    # Remove this line if you're not using ActiveRecord or ActiveRecord fixtures
    config.fixture_path = "#{::Rails.root}/spec/fixtures"

    # If you're not using ActiveRecord, or you'd prefer not to run each of your
    # examples within a transaction, remove the following line or assign false
    # instead of true.
    config.use_transactional_fixtures = true

    # If true, the base class of anonymous controllers will be inferred
    # automatically. This will be the default behavior in future versions of
    # rspec-rails.
    config.infer_base_class_for_anonymous_controllers = false
  end
end

Spork.each_run do
  # This code will be run each time you run your specs.

end

Answer 1

I ended up just adapting to Hartl's workflow using Sublime Text 2 as well, however, I did want to make sure that I could switch over to Guard with Growl notifications if I ever wanted to (no need for autotest as far as I know since I believe that's Guard's job), so this is how I did it in my personal environment set up guide. Hope it can be of some assistance to you. I'm on OSX 10.6.8, so there may be some differences you need to do on 10.7.3:

Setup Growl for RSpec test notifications (For Mac):
Growl is likely already installed on the system, but growlnotify probably is not.

1. Download the Growl-1.2.2.dmg file from here
2. Open the dmg file and go to Extras > growlnotify > growlnotify.pkg
3. Follow the wizard to install growlnotify

Configure app for testing (RSpec, Cucumber with Spork and Guard):

$ rails generate rspec:install
$ rails generate cucumber:install

Configure Spork (for RSpec and for Cucumber)

$ spork --bootstrap
$ spork cucumber --bootstrap

Add environment loading

$ subl spec/spec_helper.rb

Move the entire contents under the Instructions into the Spork.prefork block to enable environment loading only once, and also add:

config.mock_with :rspec

Configure Guard:

$ guard init rspec
$ guard init spork

Edit generated default file so Guard doesn’t run all tests after a failing test passes; drb flag is for Spork to run in distributed Ruby.

$ subl Guardfile
guard 'rspec', :version => 2, :all_after_pass => false, :cli => '--drb'  do

Config to run test suite in distributed Ruby

$ subl .rspec
--drb

Start Guard with Spork

$ guard

...and you should get Growl notifications.

The related gems I have in my Gemfile are pretty much the same as yours.

Answer 2

The error says you are missing the spec_helper file. Could you try running rails generate rspec:install and the trying again?

Answer 3

I encountered the same issue and went to Guard's GitHub page to see their documentation. The relevant portion is here: https://github.com/guard/guard#growl

It appears that the simple solution is to include the growl gem in the development group, whereas you've only included it in the test group. I did the following to get it working:

Installed Growl Notify as explained in another answer:

Setup Growl for RSpec test notifications (For Mac): Growl is likely already installed on the system, but growlnotify probably is not.

1. Download the Growl-1.2.2.dmg file from here
2. Open the dmg file and go to Extras > growlnotify > growlnotify.pkg
3. Follow the wizard to install growlnotify

Updated my Gemfile (relevant part only, the rest is matched to the Rails Tutorial):

group :development, :test do
  gem 'sqlite3', '1.3.5'
  gem 'rspec-rails', '2.11.0'
  gem 'guard-rspec', '1.2.1'
  gem 'guard-spork', '1.2.0'
  gem 'childprocess', '0.3.6'
  gem 'spork', '0.9.2'
  gem 'growl', '1.0.3'
end

Ran in Terminal:

bundle install

Opened a new terminal window and ran:

guard

Growl started working!