

Another boring RSpec formatter? NOPE! It's just ChuckTesta(r) - Rodzyn
http://chucktestar.com/

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nagnatron
A screenshot of it in action would be nice.

~~~
Rodzyn
Here is an example: <http://vimeo.com/32852547>

------
cheald
So what does it actually do?

~~~
mariuszlusiak
It's an RSpec formatter (<https://www.relishapp.com/rspec>), meaning it
formats the output from your specs (provided you're using RSpec) in a special
way.

The reason why we did this is twofold. First of all it's a joke based on the
type of humour known from Chuck's Testa ad
([http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=L...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LJP1DphOWPs),
chances are he didn't mean to be humorous). When your specs fail, the
formatter at first tells you that they pass, just to reveal the truth a second
later. This was meant as a joke so we didn't attach any screenshots on
purpose, as you don't usually explain a joke before telling it. We now
understand this put many people off, and we probably could have done better.

ChuckTestar is, however, something more than that. If you're a Ruby developer
chances are that at some point you may find the ability to use custom RSpec
formatters useful. What we show with the open source code is how to overwrite
default formatter's behaviour, how to add Growl Notifications, how to make
your machine tell you (i.e. speak out loud) whether your tests pass or fail.
We solve the problem of supporting both OSX and Linux. That's a bunch of
really useful things packed into this small gem.

There's also a related blog post that I wrote explaining all this in more
detail: [http://applicake.com/blog/index.php/2011/11/15/how-to-
write-...](http://applicake.com/blog/index.php/2011/11/15/how-to-write-your-
very-own-rspec-formatter-and-have-fun-doing-it/).

~~~
cheald
I'm a Ruby developer, and I know and use RSpec, and I still couldn't tell what
it did. I know it's an RSpec formatter, but nothing on the page tells me how
it changes the format, or why I care, other than that it invokes one of the
fastest birth-to-death memes in recent history. I'm not going to install
$RANDOM_GEM without actually understanding the value proposition.

Take a look at the announcement post for rspec-fuuu
(<http://sjackson.net/2011/08/30/rspec-fuuu.html>). It says "Hey, it turns
'FFFF' into what you're really thinking: 'FUUU'". I understand exactly what
the gem gets me, and why I should be amused. Your gem provides none of that.
No examples, not even a sentence explaining how the output format changes.
Even your lengthy blog post (which does a good job of explaining how to set up
a custom formatter) tells me nothing at all about what your gem actually does.
It's a bad sell.

~~~
mariuszlusiak
After your advise, we've added a video showing it in action
(<http://vimeo.com/32852547>) and we linked to it from the project page
(<http://chucktestar.com/>).

------
nazgob
pic or it didn't happen!

