Get the edge, that is edgemocha

I had read over the past month, or so, a few blog posts on stubba and mocha. I especially appreciated Jay Fields coverage in his blog and Chris at err.the-blog. Here are some links that will get you started.

• James Mead's blog


• Ruby/Rails Unit Testing in less than 1 second


• Ruby Stub Variations: Stubba


• The Flexibility of Mocha


• "SOAP in my Mocha!"

So, all that reading made me want to get immediately started with Mocha. When the time came to put it to work for me I installed the gem only to discover that at least version 0.3.2 did not appear to be working. The first surprise was that test/unit had to be required, or loaded first. But, even though that eliminated the unknown constant Test error, mocha still did not work. I am avoiding detailing the errors, etc, because their usefulness has expired. Why? Take a look if you dare at the head revision. I found the mocha team has been busy refactoring, apparently removing the test/unit dependency, and possibly other improvements.

I decided maybe I should try the head revision, that is go to the edge. I did not want to go back in versions as I was not sure how far I might need to and I thought going forward might allow me the chance to help with the project in some fashion. After following the directions at the project rubyforge site I launched an irb session to test.

irb(main):001:0> require 'mocha_standalone'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> include Mocha::SetupAndTeardown
=> Object
irb(main):003:0> setup_stubs
=> #<Mocha::Central:0xb791ac04 @stubba_methods=[]>
irb(main):004:0> $stubba
=> #<Mocha::Central:0xb791ac04 @stubba_methods=[]>
irb(main):005:0> class Foo
irb(main):006:1> end
=> nil
irb(main):007:0> foo = Foo.new
=> #<Foo:0xb7913f30>
irb(main):008:0> foo.expects(:nil?).returns("hello, mocha")
=> #<Mocha::Expectation:0xb790c384>
irb(main):009:0> foo.nil?
=> "hello, mocha"
irb(main):010:0> foo.nil?
=> "hello, mocha"
irb(main):011:0>

As you can see from the irb session you need to invoke the setup_stubs module function, or you will get an error about "stub" method not found on NilClass ($stubba). Once that is done, it appeared things were working. I wish I could say edgemocha is ready to go, but I am not sure, and hope to find out soon. Leave a comment if your experience was different, etc.

UPDATE:
Since it was requested, here is the problem I was having with 0.3.2, my apologies for any confusion. Compare:

~$ sudo gem install mocha
Attempting local installation of 'mocha'
Successfully installed mocha-0.3.2
~$ irb
irb(main):001:0> require 'rubygems'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> require 'test/unit'
=> true
irb(main):003:0> require 'mocha'
=> false
irb(main):004:0> Object.methods.include? "expects"
=> false
irb(main):005:0>

Now using the head revision...
~$ irb
irb(main):001:0> require 'mocha'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> include Mocha::SetupAndTeardown
=> Object
irb(main):003:0> setup_stubs
=> #<Mocha::Central:0xb78bf49c @stubba_methods=[]>
irb(main):004:0> Object.ex
Object.expects  Object.extend
irb(main):004:0> Object.methods.include? "expects"
=> true
irb(main):005:0>

Shortly after I discovered requiring stubba resolved my 0.3.2 issues it appears. Oddly examples I have seen only have a require 'mocha', for example: Start Trek Example