A JRuby, Rails, RSpec, Spork, and an error walk in to a bar...

I was running a specific rspec over and over during a tight development cycle. The way our system was set up it was taking 30+ sec to run a single spec file, which made running them onerous.

We had Spork running at one point, but it wasn't working for me, with a "undefined method 'flush' for nil:NilClass" error (and a couple of others depending on the incantation):

After upgrading Spork (we had been running an older version), setting the JRUBY_OPTS environment variable, and restarting Spork, the spec time dropped to ~8 sec. Still not particularly fast, but faster-enough to make it worth it.

Not currently running Guard. Not sure if the upgrade or opts made it start working.

This post is a work-in-progress.

RSpec Error With Implicit Subject

Ever write a trivial spec like this:

And get something totally baffling back, like this?

Backstory: Refactoring some pre-written classes to use metaprogramming to create some methods and values. I wanted specs in place before starting the metaprogramming to avoid breaking things.
In retrospect, I should have figured this out sooner. In my defense, I love the Olympics and was distracted. The constructor of the model gives it away:

A parameterized constructor, no default value: rspec couldn't instantiate the implicit subject.

Silly mistake, exacerbated by magic, hidden functionality–it's one of the greatest things about Ruby, but can occasionally lead to opaque behavior, especially during the Olympics.