Stringup

A quick and dirty test harness for testing assertions before and after an executable is run.

Synopsis

Stringup is a simple language used to define scenarios that model the correct behavior of an executable.

The description file consists of exactly one command line and any number of scenario definitions; for example, the following file can be used to verify running touch /tmp/foo will create a new file:

command 'touch /tmp/foo'

scenario :new, "Creates a file" do
  assert_creates_file '/tmp/foo'
end

If this was in scenarios.rb, you could run this with stringup:

$ stringup execute scenarios.rb --scenario new

If you had named the scenario default, the --scenario option wouldn't have been necessary, ie:

scenario :default "Creates a file" do
  assert_creates_file '/tmp/foo'
end

$ stringup execute scenarios.rb

You'll notice that this should pass the first time and fail on subsequent invocations -- because the assert_creates fails in the event a file exists before the command is run.

If you want to see what command and scenarios are defined in a file, use stringup info, eg:

$ stringup info scenarios.rb

Commands with arguments

Let's say you had an executable that reads in a configuration file and has some type of side-effect. You'd like to test running the executable against multiple configuration files checking a scenario, without having to edit the stringup file every time, changing the path to the configuration file.

Luckily the command can be provided in sprintf style. Assuming our executable is named myexec and you pass the configuration file to it via -c, the following would work:

command 'myexec -c %s'

Now, you just pass more options to stringup execute:

$ stringup execute scenarios.rb /path/to/my/configuration.conf

.. and it's just as if you ran:

$ myexec -c /path/to/my/configuration.conf

Usage help

See the commandline help documentation:

$ stringup

For more information on specific commands, you'll want to use help, eg:

$ stringup help execute

Examples

See the examples/ directory.

Assertions

The list of assertions is very short at this point.

To add an assertion, create a class that inherits from Stringup::Assertion and implements all the neccessary methods. See Stringup::Assertion and the currently defined assertions for examples.

Note: If you put your assertions in ~/.stringup/assertions/*.rb, they'll automatically be loaded. If you create any interesting assertions, make sure you let me know!

assert_creates_file

Checks to see if a file was created.

You can pass :file => true or :directory => true to ensure the file is a regular file or directory.

assert_removes_file

Checks to see if a file was removed.

You can pass :file => true or :directory => true to ensure the file was a regular file or directory before being removed.