Deployment Zone

By default when you `gem install` something you're going to get the RDoc (generated HTML documentation based on the source code) and ri (index for viewing the documentation offline) that comes along with it. You could:

#console
$ gem install terminitor --no-rdoc --no-ri

... if you aren't worried about the documentation. The problem is, of course, remembering to add those command line arguments every time. Fortunately there is an easy solution - like all good Unix utilities `gem` will read `/etc/gemrc` or `~/.gemrc` for default configuration options. The RC files are in YAML format; to globally disable rdoc and ri generation during gem installation for just yourself:

#~/.gemrc
gem: --no-rdoc --no-ri

To understand exactly what you are turning off read: Ruby ri Tool. Honestly since I've just now bothered to read how to use `ri` I will probably leave it on for my workstations and just turn it off for my servers.
For other things you can do in your `.gemrc` file read the documentation.

I assume this patch is going to end up in 1.9.3 but in the mean time: How To Get That Edge Ruby Faster-Loading-Hotness in Ruby 1.9.2 Now

Very easy to do, even for someone fairly new to Ruby, like me. You'll end up having to change your `.rvmrc` file to `rvm use ruby-1.9.2-p180-patched` and do the necessary steps to populate the new gemset (`gem install bundler ; bundle install`).

My guard/rspec/spork/growl went from a 1-2 second delay to pretty much instantaneous when saving a spec or associated controller/model/helper. `bundle exec rake cucumber` also doesn't feel nearly as sluggish.

Assume the following ActiveRecord::Base class:

#./app/models/army_list.rb
class ArmyList < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :game_system

  validates :name, :presence => true
  validates :points, :numericality => true
  validates :game_system, :presence => true
end

I was just pulling my hair out over this spec I was writing to make sure all my validations were working properly:

#./spec/models/army_list_spec.rb
describe ArmyList do
  it "should be valid" do
    ArmyList.new(:name => "Name", :points => 1500, :game_system => Factory(:game_system)).should be_valid
  end
end

Changing it from the constructor method to the block method works however:

#army_list_spec.rb
describe ArmyList do
  it "should be valid" do
    ArmyList.new do |al|
      al.name = "Name"
      al.points = 1500
      al.game_system = Factory(:game_system)
    end
    .should be_valid
  end
end

Now that I've solved this problem it makes sense. The ActiveRecord::Base documentation for #new states

[...] valid attribute keys are determined by the column names of the associated table – hence you can’t have attributes that aren’t part of the table columns.

Because the column name is actually `game_system_id` it doesn't make sense that I'd be assigning `game_system` - an attribute that doesn't exist on the table - by using this form of the constructor.

I get this feeling that speccing views in Rails may be pooh-poohed but with this being my first substantive Rails project I wanted to run the full gamut. As I'm using RSpec 2 I discovered that what I thought would be a readily available tag matching assertion is just gone; this is functionality that was available in RSpec 1 but removed due to its rigidness/difficulty to maintain and the fact that Webrat has `have_selector` for performing a similar task.

But I really wanted the simplistic and easily readable `have_tag` syntax so I looked around to see what else was out there. I stumbled across rspec2-rails-view-matchers which was exactly what I was looking for.

I ended up with the following code for testing that one of my show views has the required links for navigation (among other things):

#spec/views/army_lists/show.html.haml_spec.rb
require 'spec_helper'

describe "army_lists/show.html.haml" do
  subject do
    assign(:army_list,
      stub_model(ArmyList,
        :name => "Name",
        :user => User.new do |u|
          u.display_name = "John Smith"
          u.id = 1
        end,
        :game_system => GameSystem.new do |gs|
          gs.id = 1
          gs.name = "Generic Game System"
        end
      )
    )
    render
    rendered
  end

  it { should have_tag("a", :text => "John Smith") }
  it { should have_tag("p", :text => /Name/m) }
  it { should have_tag("a", :text => /Generic Game System/m) }
end