Getting Autotest to Work with Growl on OS X

Question

I'm using Ruby 1.9.2 and Rails 3.0.7 on Mac OS X 10.6.7.

I have had the most terrible time getting growl to display autotest notifications. I have autotest installed and working perfectly.

Every time I make a change to a file, the tests are run without a problem. Growl simply refuses to work. In my Growl preferences panel I can see that autotest is added to the list of applications and enabled and Growl is on and running. Here's what my gemfile looks like:

source 'http://rubygems.org'

gem 'rails'
gem 'sqlite3-ruby', :require => 'sqlite3'

group :development do
  gem 'rspec-rails'
  gem 'annotate-models'
end

group :test do
  gem 'rspec'
  gem 'webrat'
  gem "ZenTest"
  gem "autotest-rails-pure"
  gem "autotest-growl"
  gem "autotest-fsevent"
end

And here's my .autotest file:

require 'autotest/growl'
require 'autotest/fsevent'

I've tried everything I can think of to get this to work. I tried:

• following the first two pages of guides on Google for autotest and OS X.
• deleting my gemset in RVM and reinstalling.
• running bundle install dozens of times.
• installing the test_notifier gem.

None of these steps seemed to work. I'd appreciate any help or suggestions. It's been a frustrating two days trying to get this to work.

Answer 1

You might want to consider using Guard-RSpec to run your specs. It's easy to install, and it works with Growl. Be sure to look at the base Guard gem. I've switched over from Autotest over a month ago and have been happy. Here's the Railscasts about Guard.

Answer 2

Have you tried putting gem 'autotest-growl' in your development group? I've always put it there and have had no problems; I've just assumed it's the same reason that you have gem 'rspec-rails' in your development group.