RubySpec

Ruby 1.9 Issues

There are two main problems running the specs on Ruby 1.9:

1. Ruby 1.9 changes language features and many core library methods.
2. Potential bugs in Ruby 1.9

The RubySpecs were initially written for Ruby 1.8. Many of the specs work fine with 1.9. However, many of the specs fail on 1.9 because the specs need to be updated. To facilitate the process of updating the specs for 1.9, tags for failures have been added to the RubySpec source.

MSpec provides a special runner script that will read the tags and NOT run specs that fail. You can also exclude tagged specs with the default runner script.

Specs are tagged with ‘fails’ and ‘critical’. Specs tagged as critical are specs that either cause hangs or segfaults.

To run all the specs but exclude failing ones:

$ cd rubyspec
$ mspec ci -tr19

To run specs but exclude a particular tag:

$ mspec -tr19 -G critical
$ mspec -tr19 -G fails
$ mspec -tr19 -G critical -G fails

To run only the specs with a particular tag:

$ mspec -tr19 -g critical
$ mspec -tr19 -g fails core/array

Listing tagged specs

To see the descriptions of all the specs tagged:

$ mspec tag --list-all
$ mspec tag --list critical
$ mspec tag --list fails

Removing tags

Once the specs have been updated, or bugs fixed in Ruby 1.9, the tags can be removed.

$ mspec tag --del fails core/array/append_spec.rb

When removing tags, it is usually best to give the specific file to process.

Stable version of 1.9

RubySpec does not attempt to spec any version of 1.9 prior to the 1.9.2p0 stable release. In ruby_version_is guards, use “1.9” if the behavior is 1.9 specific and has not changed in the stable release of 1.9.2. If 1.9.3 behavior differs from 1.9.2 stable, then use the appropriate versions in the guards.

 1 ruby_version_is "" ... "1.9" do
 2   it "does something on versions prior to 1.9" do
 3     # ...
 4   end
 5 end
 6 
 7 ruby_version_is "1.9" do
 8   it "does something on 1.9" do
 9     # ...
10   end
11 end

Using ruby_bug guards for 1.9

RubySpec only specifies the behavior of version 1.9 from the stable release at 1.9.2 patchlevel 0. The ruby_bug guard should not be used for any version of 1.9 prior to 1.9.2p0.