Knapsack pro 7.1.0

[mkllnk]

What? Why?

• Closes Bumps knapsack_pro to v7.1.0 #12442
• Closes Bump knapsack_pro to 7.1.0 #12445

Knapsack Pro 7 changed the timing of calling RSpec's before-suite calls. Since they are, correctly, only called once before the suite, our before-suite call to compile assets when needed failed. In queue mode, there are no examples loaded yet when the before-suite hook is called and therefore we don't know yet if we need to compile assets or not.

Now we load the RSpec hooks early for Knapsack Pro to recognise them and we check for asset compilation before each batch.

What should we test?

• Specs only.

Release notes

Changelog Category (reviewers may add a label for the release notes):

• User facing changes
• API changes (V0, V1, DFC or Webhook)
• Technical changes only
• Feature toggled

The title of the pull request will be included in the release notes.

Dependencies

Documentation updates

[rioug]

Good one, it's a surprisingly small change in the end !

[mkllnk]

Hi @ArturT, nice to see you here. There may be an issue with the execution of before(:all) callbacks which forces us to load such callbacks before Knapsack. My theory of the problem:

• Knapsack loads and runs before(:suite) once.
• It fetches the next spec file from the queue.
• Knapsack then runs before(:all) and requires the spec file. <-- I don't know this but it would explain why our hook is not executed unless we load it in the .rspec file.
• The specs are executed.

Is the above theory right? Could Knapsack first load the spec file and then run the hooks including one that were just added by loading a spec helper? It's quite common to load additional spec helper files, possibly with new RSpec hooks, within certain spec files.

[dacook]

In queue mode, there are no examples loaded yet when the before-suite hook is called

Just a thought: I wonder if Knapsack could override the rspec examples method, and raise an exception explaining that you can't use it there.

[dacook]

Compared with another recent build on master, the overall runtime was reduced by 5min.
However these runtimes can vary a lot so that's hardly conclusive.

[ArturT]

Hi @mkllnk

Hi @ArturT, nice to see you here. There may be an issue with the execution of before(:all) callbacks which forces us to load such callbacks before Knapsack. My theory of the problem:

• Knapsack loads and runs before(:suite) once.

Yes.

• It fetches the next spec file from the queue.

Yes. The test files are loaded after before(:suite) has been executed.

• Knapsack then runs before(:all) and requires the spec file. <-- I don't know this but it would explain why our hook is not executed unless we load it in the .rspec file.
• The specs are executed.

Is the above theory right? Could Knapsack first load the spec file and then run the hooks including one that were just added by loading a spec helper? It's quite common to load additional spec helper files, possibly with new RSpec hooks, within certain spec files.

The rails_helper.rb and spec_helper.rb should be automatically loaded before any test is loaded by the knapsack_pro gem.

The change introduced in 7.0.1
https://github.com/KnapsackPro/knapsack_pro-ruby/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#701

The before(:suite) hook should be registered and known to RSpec before any test file is loaded. You can define before(:suite) in spec_helper.rb or rails_helper.rb.

Tests are dynamically fetched in batches from Knapsack Pro Queue API and loaded after before(:suite) hook has already been executed. Your before(:suite) hook defined in a test file won't run because you loaded its definition too late (due to tests being dynamically loaded in multiple batches).

If you need to load a specific hook only once for a certain type of tests, you can look at this:
https://docs.knapsackpro.com/ruby/rspec/#load-code-only-once-for-a-specific-type-of-specs
It allows you to simulate before(:suite) behaviour that could be lazy load.

[ArturT]

In queue mode, there are no examples loaded yet when the before-suite hook is called

Just a thought: I wonder if Knapsack could override the rspec examples method, and raise an exception explaining that you can't use it there.

@dacook Perhaps we could detect that you defined before(:suite) in a test file that is loaded after the before(:suite) hook has already been executed. We could then warn the user that it's too late to define the hook.

[mkllnk]

I totally understand the before(:suite) logic but I was wondering why the before(:all) hook was also called before the spec file is loaded.

Anyway, thank you for all the documentation. I didn't know about when_first_matching_example_defined which is a much better solution for our problem.

[ArturT]

I totally understand the before(:suite) logic but I was wondering why the before(:all) hook was also called before the spec file is loaded.

@mkllnk I think the reason is that your spec_helper.rb loads spec/base_spec_helper.rb which loads:

Dir[Rails.root.join("spec/support/**/*.rb")].sort.each { |f| require f }

It means spec/support/precompile_assets.rb (that has defined before(:all)) is loaded before any test file is fetched from the Queue API. As a result, the before(:all) hook is executed before test files.

The knapsack_pro gem loads spec_helper.rb and rails_helper.rb before loading tests.

[mkllnk]

I'm not sure if it's worth investigating further, but just for clarification: The problem was solved by loading the base_spec_helper.rb in the .rspec file. So the file was loaded even earlier. It's just registering the hook. From that I concluded that Knapsack ran those before-all hooks before the first queue file was loaded. Otherwise, it would have registered the hook when loading the spec file and then executed it before running it. But that didn't happen. As a test, I took all conditions out of that hook and it did not run when loaded from the spec file. It only ran when loaded in the .rspec file. That made me think that there's an old copy of the before-all hooks list called and not updated when new files are loaded. Anyway, we found a way that works for us.