Command line options

The rspec command comes with several options you can use to customize RSpec’s behavior, including output formats, filtering examples, etc.

For a full list of options, run the rspec command with the --help flag:

$ rspec --help

Run with ruby

Generally, life is simpler if you just use the rspec command. If you must use the ruby command, however, you’ll need to require rspec/autorun. You can either pass a -rrspec/autorun CLI option when invoking ruby, or add a require 'rspec/autorun' to one or more of your spec files.

It is conventional to put configuration in and require assorted support files from spec/spec_helper.rb. It is also conventional to require that file from the spec files using require 'spec_helper'. This works because RSpec implicitly adds the spec directory to the LOAD_PATH. It also adds lib, so your implementation files will be on the LOAD_PATH as well.

If you’re using the ruby command, you’ll need to do this yourself (with the -I option). Putting these together, your command might be something like this:

$ ruby -Ilib -Ispec -rrspec/autorun path/to/spec.rb

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