Introduction

Agile Web Development with Rails (awdwr) is a test suite for the scenario found in the book by the same name published by Pragmatic Programmers. It was originally developed out of self defence to keep up with the rapid pace of change in Rails itself, and has also proven valuable as a system test for rails itself.

This code has been developed over a long period of time, and still has accommodations for things like:

• The days before puma was the default
• The days before SCSS and CoffeeScript
• The days before sprockets when images were placed in public/images
• The days before bundler existed
• Ruby 1.8.7's hash syntax and the requirement to require rubygems if you wanted to use it.

It works natively on Mac OS/X El Capitan and Ubuntu 14.04. It works with either rbenv or rvm. The dashboard can be run as CGI under Apache httpd, using Passenger on nginx, or simply with WebBrick.

Instructions are provided separately for usage under vagrant and cloud9. Or install Rails Dev Box, ssh into the vagrant machine and run the following command:

eval "$(curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rubys/awdwr/master/rdb-setup)"

Control over directory locations and versions to be tested is provided by dashboard.yml and testrails.yml.

Installation

Installation of all necessary dependencies from a fresh install of Ubuntu or Mac OS/X:

ruby setup.rb # see comments if dependencies aren't met

Execution instructions:

ruby makedepot.rb [VERSION] [restore] [RANGE]... [save] --work=dir --port=n

Description of the options:

"restore" - restore from snapshot before resuming execution

"VERSION" specifies the Rails version to test.  Examples:
  edge
  _2.2.2_
  ~/git

"RANGE" specifies a set of sections to execute.  Examples:
  6.2..6.5
  7.1-9.5
  16

"save" - save snapshot after execution completes

--work=dir: name of work directory to use (default: "work")

--port=n: port number to use for the test (default: 3000)

Output will be produced as makedepot.html.

Tests against makedepot.html can also be run separately:

ruby checkdepot.rb

Output will be produced as checkdepot.html.

Automation tools:

• setup.rb: initial setup and verification
• testrails.rb: front end to makedepot that manages the environment
• dashboard.rb: cgi to monitor status / start jobs

Sample configuration data:

• testrails.yml: provides mappings for edition, rails, and ruby versions
• dashboard.yml: lists test configurations

Sample output:

http://intertwingly.net/projects/dashboard.html