Question

Recently, I’ve read quite a few articles about Minitest. I really like the idea of a super lightweight test framework. I decided to replace rspec with it in a recent project and have had no luck getting it all to work. My problems are

a) getting named routes in my acceptance/integration tests (rspec and test::unit seem to automatically include them but no go with minitest),
b) and the overall lack of adoption in rails makes me uneasy (everyone seems to be using rspec though it’s used more with gems/libraries).

Is it worth using minitest when rspec has the main dominance with testing rails applications?

Answer 1

I’m the author of minitest-rails. Things have changed a lot from the time you originally asked this to now. My answer assumes you’re using minitest-rails.

Named Routes

If you are using minitest-rails this just works (now). You can use the generators to create these tests, or write them yourself. All the named routes are available in your acceptance/integration tests.

require "minitest_helper"

describe "Homepage Acceptance Test" do
  it "must load successfully" do
    get root_path
    assert_response :success
  end
end

Adoption

I think we will continue to see increased attention on using Minitest with Rails as we get closer to Rails 4.

Worth it?

I think starting with Minitest now is totally worth it. There is tremendous activity going on in Minitest right now. It aligns nicely with the recent focus on fast tests as well. But it really depends on your app and team dynamics.