Using tlb_rb:

tlb.rb uses tlb under the hood. It runs a sub-process which talks to the actual tlb-server(or equivallent) to balance and post run-feedback. Balancer process is actually an HTTP server which listen to a certain TCP port so tlb-ruby library can talk to it. This is controlled by an environment variable named 'TLB_BALANCER_PORT', which can be set to any port number(integer between 1024 to 65535) that is guaranteed to remain un-bound while the build runs.

In addition to this extra environment variable, the usual TLB environment variable setup is required(so the balancer knows things like what partitioning algorithm to use or what server to talk to). Detailed documentation of TLB environment variable configuration is available at http://test-load-balancer.github.com

As of now, tlb.rb supports RSpec(1.x and 2.x) and Test::Unit, which are the two most widely used testing frameworks in Ruby. We plan to add support for other ruby-testing-frameworks soon.

Setting it up for your project

Please refer the sample_projects to see the details of how to set it up.

Usually, something equivallent of this in one of your Rake files should suffice: RSpec-1.x:
require 'rubygems' gem 'tlb-rspec1' require 'tlb/spec_task'

Tlb::SpecTask.new(:balanced_specs) do |t|
  t.spec_files = FileList['spec/**/*_spec.rb']
  t.spec_opts << "--format progress"
end

load 'tasks/tlb.rake'
desc "run specs load-balanced(based on environment variables)"
task :bal => ['tlb:start', :balanced_specs]

RSpec-2.x: require 'rubygems' gem 'tlb-rspec2' require 'tlb/rspec/spec_task'

Tlb::RSpec::SpecTask.new(:run_balanced) do |t|
  t.pattern = 'spec/**/*_spec.rb'
end

load 'tasks/tlb.rake'
desc "run specs load-balanced(based on environment variables)"
task :bal => ['tlb:start', :run_balanced]

Test::Unit: require 'rake' require 'rubygems' gem 'tlb-testunit' require 'tlb/test_unit/test_task'

Tlb::TestUnit::TestTask.new(:test_balanced) do |t|
  t.libs << "test"
  t.test_files = FileList['test/**/*_test.rb']
  t.verbose = true
end

load 'tasks/tlb.rake'

task :bal => ['tlb:start', :test_balanced]

Where bal is the task you invoke at the top-level(invoked externally).

RSpec source-control and release-version/environment compatibility

The branch 'master' supports Test::Unit and RSpec-2.x. If you use RSpec-1(i.e. 1.3.x etc), please use the branch named 'rspec-1'. Having said that, we encourage end-users to use the released gem versions insteed of using upstream snapshot. Detailed documentation for every released version is available at http://test-load-balancer.github.com. Please post any issues on our Issue Tracker.