RSpec 3.9 has been released, and RSpec team changes.

Jon Rowe

RSpec 3.9 has just been released! As the RSpec project follows semantic versioning, anyone already using RSpec 3 should be able to upgrade to this version seemlessly, but if we have introduced a regression please let us know, and we’ll get a patch release out to sort it out as soon as possible.

We’re sad to announce that Penelope Phippen has retired from the project, leaving myself, Jon Rowe as the sole lead maintainer going forward, but its not all bad news, we welcome our newest core team member Phil Pirozhkov.

Thank you Penelope for all your hard word over the years and welcome Phil!

This is the last release in which the RSpec gems, rspec, rspec-core, rspec-expectations and rspec-mocks will be in sync with rspec-rails. We’ll be launched rspec-rails 4 soon which will be classed as an extension gem and not kept in sync version wise with the core gems, which will allow us to keep rspec-rails in sync with Rails versions, more on that soon.

RSpec continues to receive contributions from all over the world, we had 369 commits and 98 merged pull requests from 52 different contributors who helped make this release happen. Thank you all :)

Notable Changes

Core: Improved error handling

If RSpec encounters an error whilst loading support files, it will now skip loading specs files removing later confusing errors due to the earlier error(s). Additionally when available did_you_mean suggestions will be shown for any LoadErrors that are encountered.

Core: Command Line Interface improvement, --example-matches

With the release of 3.9 you can now use --example-matches to filter your examples via a regular expression, useful if you only know part of an example name or have specs with a common theme across a number of different files.

Core: New Formatter

In 3.9 you will find a new built in formatter option, the failure list formatter, which can be used via the command line as --format f or --format failure_list, or via the RSpec::Configuration#formatter method. This new formatter produces output in a more minimalist “quick fix” style output.

Expectations: respond_to(:new)

The respond_to matcher now special cases :new and checks :initialize if its a standard class method.

Expectations: Empty diff warning

Prior to 3.9 when you had matchers that failed but the items under test produced the same inspect output you’d get a confusing diff were both sides look the same, we now detect this scenario and issue a warning.

Mocks: Improved thread safety

A bonus for people running parralleised specs, 3.9 brings some improvements to our threaded behaviour by adding mutexes to avoid deadlocking errors.

Rails: rails_helper.rb improvements

A minor tweak in 3.9 brining the generated rails_helper.rb inline with Ruby semantics and using __dir__ rather than __FILE__ on newer Rubies.

Rails: New email matchers

Add a new have_enqueued_mail matcher for making it easier to assert on mailer specific active jobs.

Rails: New generators

Version 3.9 brings a couple of new generator scaffolds, you can now generate system specs on Rails 5.1 and above, generate specs for generators and add routes when generating controller specs.

Stats:

Combined:

• Total Commits: 322
• Merged pull requests: 59
• 54 contributors: Aaron Kromer, Alex Haynes, Alireza Bashiri, Andy Waite, Benoit Tigeot, Bobby McDonald, Chris, Christophe Bliard, ConSou, David Rodríguez, Douglas Lovell, Eito Katagiri, Emric, Fred Snyder, Giovanni Kock Bonetti, Grey Baker, Jack Wink, Jamie English, Joel Lubrano, Jon Rowe, Juanito Fatas, Keiji, Kevin, Kevin Kuchta, Kieran O'Grady, Kohei Sugi, Laura Paakkinen, Manuel Schnitzer, Matijs van Zuijlen, Michel Ocon, Myron Marston, Nazar Matus, Nick LaMuro, OKURA Masafumi, Olle Jonsson, Orien Madgwick, Patrick Boatner, Penelope Phippen, Pete Johns, Phil Pirozhkov, Philippe Hardardt, Rafe Rosen, Romain Tartière, Ryan Lue, Sam Joseph, Samuel Williams, Taichi Ishitani, Takumi Kaji, Thomas Walpole, Tom Grimley, Viktor Fonic, Yoshimi, aymeric-ledorze, 三上大河

rspec-core:

• Total Commits: 92
• Merged pull requests: 13
• 22 contributors: Alex Haynes, Andy Waite, Benoit Tigeot, Chris, Christophe Bliard, David Rodríguez, Jon Rowe, Juanito Fatas, Keiji, Matijs van Zuijlen, Myron Marston, Nick LaMuro, Olle Jonsson, Orien Madgwick, Pete Johns, Phil Pirozhkov, Philippe Hardardt, Romain Tartière, Sam Joseph, Samuel Williams, Viktor Fonic, Yoshimi

rspec-expectations:

• Total Commits: 60
• Merged pull requests: 7
• 15 contributors: Benoit Tigeot, Eito Katagiri, Fred Snyder, Jack Wink, Jamie English, Jon Rowe, Juanito Fatas, Matijs van Zuijlen, Myron Marston, Nazar Matus, Olle Jonsson, Orien Madgwick, Pete Johns, Phil Pirozhkov, Taichi Ishitani

rspec-mocks:

• Total Commits: 38
• Merged pull requests: 2
• 10 contributors: Alireza Bashiri, Benoit Tigeot, Jon Rowe, Juanito Fatas, Kevin, Matijs van Zuijlen, Myron Marston, Olle Jonsson, Orien Madgwick, Patrick Boatner

rspec-rails:

• Total Commits: 103
• Merged pull requests: 17
• 27 contributors: Aaron Kromer, Benoit Tigeot, Bobby McDonald, ConSou, Douglas Lovell, Emric, Giovanni Kock Bonetti, Grey Baker, Joel Lubrano, Jon Rowe, Kevin Kuchta, Kieran O'Grady, Kohei Sugi, Laura Paakkinen, Manuel Schnitzer, Michel Ocon, Myron Marston, OKURA Masafumi, Olle Jonsson, Orien Madgwick, Penelope Phippen, Rafe Rosen, Ryan Lue, Takumi Kaji, Thomas Walpole, Tom Grimley, aymeric-ledorze

rspec-support:

• Total Commits: 29
• Merged pull requests: 20
• 4 contributors: Benoit Tigeot, Jon Rowe, Myron Marston, 三上大河

Docs

API Docs

• rspec-core
• rspec-expectations
• rspec-mocks
• rspec-rails

Cucumber Features

• rspec-core
• rspec-expectations
• rspec-mocks
• rspec-rails

Release Notes

rspec-core-3.9.0

Full Changelog

Enhancements: * Improve the handling of errors during loading support files, if a file errors before loading specs, RSpec will now skip loading the specs. (David Rodríguez, #2568) * Add support for –example-matches to run examples by regular expression. (Sam Joseph, Matt Rider, @okothkongo1, #2586) * Add did_you_mean suggestions for file names encountering a LoadError outside of examples. (@obromios, #2601) * Add a minimalist quick fix style formatter, only outputs failures as file:line:message. (Romain Tartière, #2614) * Convert string number values to integer when used for RSpec::Configuration#fail_fast (Viktor Fonic, #2634) * Issue warning when invalid values are used for RSpec::Configuration#fail_fast (Viktor Fonic, #2634) * Add support for running the Rake task in a clean environment. (Jon Rowe, #2632) * Indent messages by there example group / example in the documentation formatter. (Samuel Williams, #2649)

rspec-expectations-3.9.0

Full Changelog

Enhancements:

• The respond_to matcher now uses the signature from initialize to validate checks for new (unless new is non standard). (Jon Rowe, #1072)
• Generated descriptions for matchers now use is expected to rather than should in line with our preferred DSL. (Pete Johns, #1080, rspec/rspec-core#2572)
• Add the ability to re-raise expectation errors when matching with match_when_negated blocks. (Jon Rowe, #1130)
• Add a warning when an empty diff is produce due to identical inspect output. (Benoit Tigeot, #1126)

rspec-mocks-3.9.0

Full Changelog

Enhancements:

• Improve thread safety of message expectations by using Mutex to prevent deadlocking errors. (Ry Biesemeyer, #1236)
• Add the ability to use time as an alias for times. For example: expect(Class).to receive(:method).exactly(1).time. (Pistos, Benoit Tigeot, #1271)

rspec-rails-3.9.0

Full Changelog

Enhancements

• Use __dir__ instead of __FILE__ in generated rails_helper.rb where supported. (OKURA Masafumi, #2048)
• Add have_enqueued matcher as a “super” matcher to the ActiveJob matchers making it easier to match on ActiveJob delivered emails. (Joel Lubrano, #2047)
• Add generator for system specs on Rails 5.1 and above. (Andrzej Sliwa, #1933)
• Add generator for generator specs. (@ConSou, #2085)
• Add option to generate routes when generating controller specs. (David Revelo, #2134)

Bug Fixes:

• Make the ActiveJob matchers fail when multiple jobs are queued for negated matches. e.g. `expect { job; job; }.tonot haveenqueued_job. (Emric Istanful, #2069)