Jstdutil - A Ruby wrapper over JsTestDriver

Today I needed remote access to a gem I've been tinkering with for a while, so I pushed it to Gemcutter. It's called jstdutil, and it provides a small Ruby wrapper over JsTestDriver that adds colored output, a short, snappy `jstestdriver` command and autotest.

Install it

The gem is available on Gemcutter, which requires that you install their gem (and use RubyGems >= 1.3.5):

gem update --system
gem install gemcutter
gem tumble

Then you're ready to install:

gem install jstdutil

Then download the JsTestDriver jar. Put it somewhere safe, like ~/bin/java, and set the environment variable $JSTESTDRIVER_HOME to the directory where you put the file (e.g., export JSTESTDRIVER_HOME=~/bin/java). That's it!

Use it

Now you can run JsTestDriver with `jstestdriver`. For instance, to start the server, you can issue:

jstestdriver --port 4224

Then, run all your tests:

jstestdriver --tests all
# If config is not in cwd:
jstestdriver --config path/to/config.conf --tests all

The output should be nicely colored, even on Windows. If you're not seeing colors on Windows, you need to:

gem install win32console

Autotest

The best part is autotest. Simply:

jsautotest
# If config is not in cwd:
jsautotest --config path/to/config.conf

Swish! Autotest runs the entire test suite initially, and then waits for any of your files to change. Once a file changes, jstdutil makes some intelligent guesses on which test cases were affected, and runs only the corresponding tests. If you want to rerun the test suite, simply issue Ctrl-C in the shell where autotest is running. Quickly issuing Ctrl-C twice aborts autotest.

A word of warning

As I mentioned, I pushed the gem in need of remote access earlier today. This means that it''s not quite as finished as I had planned, but I've been using it for a few weeks, and it does work great most of the time. If you encounter any issues, please do let me know. Even better: clone the project on Gitorious, or fork it on GitHub and fix it yourself.

Why write a wrapper?

These features could probably easily have been added to the JsTestDriver project itself. In fact, the right thing for me to do would probably be to submit a patch of sorts. However, I enjoy Ruby alot more than Java, and my Java is a bit rusty. I hope JsTestDriver one day incorporates something like this, lessening the burden of installing it (if you're really into colored output and shell autotest like me).