Flatware Build Status Code Climate

Flatware parallelizes your test suite to significantly reduce test time.

Requirements

  • ZeroMQ > 4.0

Installation

ZeroMQ

Linux Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install -qq libzmq3-dev

(Never you mind the 3. This package contains ZMQ version 4.)

Mac OSX

If you're on macOS 10.12, use the custom hashrocket ZMQ homebrew formula.

brew tap hashrocket/formulas
brew install hashrocket/formulas/zeromq

The stock homebrew version will likely work on older versions of macOS.

brew install zeromq

Flatware

Add the runners you need to your Gemfile:

gem 'flatware-rspec', require: false    # one
gem 'flatware-cucumber', require: false # or both

then run

bundle install

Usage

Cucumber

To run your entire suite with the default cucumber options, add the flatware-cucumber gem and just:

$ flatware cucumber

RSpec

To run your entire suite with the default rspec options add the flatware-rspec gem and just:

$ flatware rspec

Options

If you'd like to limit the number of forked workers, you can pass the 'w' flag:

$ flatware -w 3

You can also pass most cucumber/rspec options to Flatware. For example, to run only features that are not tagged 'javascript', you can:

$ flatware cucumber -t 'not @javascript'

Additionally, for either cucumber or rspec you can specify a directory:

$ flatware rspec spec/features

Typical Usage in a Rails App

Add the following to your config/database.yml:

test:
  database: foo_test

becomes:

test:
  database: foo_test<%=ENV['TEST_ENV_NUMBER']%>

Run the following:

$ rake db:setup # if not already done
$ flatware fan rake db:test:prepare

Now you are ready to rock:

$ flatware rspec && flatware cucumber

Planned Features

  • Use heuristics to run your slowest tests first

Design Goals

Maintainable

  • Fully test at an integration level. Don't be afraid to change the code. If you break it you'll know.
  • Couple as loosely as possible, and only to the most stable/public bits of Cucumber and RSpec.

Minimal

  • Projects define their own preparation scripts
  • Only distribute to local cores (for now)

Robust

  • Depend on a dedicated messaging library
  • Be accountable for completed work; provide progress report regardless of completing the suite.

Tinkering

Flatware integration tests use aruba. In order to get a demo cucumber project you can add the @no-clobber tag to features/flatware.feature and run the test with cucumber features/flatware.feature. Now you should have a ./tmp/aruba directory. CD there and flatware will be in your path so you can tinker away.

How it works

Flatware relies on a message passing system to enable concurrency. The main process declares a worker for each cpu in the computer. Each worker forks from the main process and is then assigned a portion of the test suite. As the worker runs the test suite it sends progress messages to the main process. These messages are collected and when the last worker is finished the main process provides a report on the collected progress messages.

Resources

To learn more about the messaging system that Flatware uses, take a look at the excellent ZeroMQ guide.

Contributing to Flatware

Do whatever you want. I'd love to help make sure Flatware meets your needs.

About

Hashrocket logo

Flatware is supported by the team at Hashrocket, a multidisciplinary design & development consultancy. If you'd like to work with us or join our team, don't hesitate to get in touch.