Category Archives: Test Driven Development

Code Coverage — a simple Rails example

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: September 18, 2014

My tests are my safety net. With them I can refactor with confidence, knowing that I’m keeping the functionality I intended. With them, I can grow my codebase, knowing that I’m not introducing regression errors. How do I have confidence that my safety net is good enough? One metric I can use to help with this […]

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Getting Growl notifications from your Virtual Machine

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: September 7, 2014

As I develop I have Guard running in the background, executing my tests when things change. But I often don’t have the Terminal window front and centre, so I like to have Growl notifications for my test results. Setting up Growl to push notifications from the Virtual Machine to the host is a little tricky, so here’s a […]

Also posted in Agile Software Development, Engineering, Quality Software, Rails, Ruby, Software Craftsmanship | 1 Response

Using Spring with RSpec and Guard to speed up testing

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: September 4, 2014

In my last post I showed you how to setup Guard and RSpec so you can automatically run tests when things change. Now lets get things cooking on gas by using the Spring application preloader. This will mean that your app framework will only have to load once, and tests will be super zippy. Setting up […]

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Getting Started with Guard and RSpec

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: September 4, 2014
"Detroit Publishing Co. - A Yeoman of the Guard (N.B. actually a Yeoman Warder), full restoration" by Adam Cuerden, Detroit Publishing Company - http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002696943/. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Detroit_Publishing_Co._-_A_Yeoman_of_the_Guard_(N.B._actually_a_Yeoman_Warder),_full_restoration.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Detroit_Publishing_Co._-_A_Yeoman_of_the_Guard_(N.B._actually_a_Yeoman_Warder),_full_restoration.jpg

As I build out an application I want to ensure it’s behaving as I intend it. RSpec is a great framework for testing Ruby code, and is the tool I use most for my testing. But tests are pretty useless if you don’t run them, and rather than manually run tests when I change things, […]

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Have you been hurt by code reuse? Learn from De Niro

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: July 6, 2011

Ever used someone else’s code; a library or sample app online? Ever got to a point where it’s been so mind-bendingly painful that you rue the day you ever found the stupid ‘library’ in the first place? If not then chances are you’re not a developer, you’re this guy, or you’re delusional. Spurred by a […]

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FlexUnit eclipse plugin alpha

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: August 30, 2007

I’ve been kind of quiet recently for three reasons: Its summer Work has been insanely busy I’ve been beavering away on a new plugin for eclipse The plugin is designed with one key goal in mind: shortening the develop-test feedback loop. It integrates eclipse and the flexunit framework to make our lives as developers easier. […]

Also posted in Agile Software Development, Flash & Actionscript | 1 Response

CruiseControl on the Mac – modifying the build script to work x-platform

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: June 12, 2007

So, I thought I was doing pretty well, getting svn working on the mac, installing cruisecontrol for my continuous integration, even getting SCPlugin working with unsigned certificates. Then I tried to run my ant build, and ended up having all sorts of problems getting my mac debug player to run. Some investigating and help from […]

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FlexUnit / ASUnit deathmatch results

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: July 2, 2006

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I am looking into how asunit and flexunit can fit into our continuous integration set up. The move into AS3 has given me an opportunity to reassess how the 2 frameworks fit my/our needs. The prior post set out the criteria I was testing against – here is […]

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FlexUnit UI factory

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: June 16, 2006

When I started looking into how we could use flexunit in our CI build, I was struck by how the UI is closely linked to the actual running of the test suite. I really wanted to be able to use the supplied flexunit GUI out of the box – after all, it does everything the […]

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FlexUnit for Cruise Control – XML output

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: June 16, 2006

If you read my earlier posts on Flex and continuous integration, you will remember that we had to do some work to get ASUnit to spit out its results in a manner that would be understood by Cruise Control. We built a log parser to parse results from the Flash players trace file into an […]

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