On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 5:47 PM, Colfer, Brian <bcol...@shopping.com> wrote: > Cucumber is not built to do rapid BDD ... It is an integration and acceptance > specification exercise system. Rspec is for development ... Mocks are an > integral part of the BDD process. The idea is to partition the system > component behaviors so that you can focuss on the implementing the behavior > that you are working on. This minimizes the "Yak Shaving " > http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving
While many might see Cucumber as a an "integration and acceptance specification exercise system," and it certainly is a great tool for expressing executable acceptance tests, it's actually also quite powerful in doing rapid BDD. The term "outside-in" development is gaining popularity for a process which uses Cucumber (or a similar tool I guess) and RSpec (or similar) together to do iterative development using two nested iteration cycles. The process goes something like: 1. Pick a story 2. Write a failing cucumber scenario for the story. 3. If, as is likely to happen the scenario exposes the need for new classes, or new class behavior then: 4. Use RSpec to design/code the new class(es) and behaviours writing failing examples, then making them work. 5. When the scenario succeeds, consider whether refactoring (in the context of the overall system) is desirable in order to manage technical debt. 6. Repeat from 1 Using cucumber scenarios to keep you on the track of doing the next thing that NEEDS to be done is a very good way to stave off the desire to shave yaks. -- Rick DeNatale Blog: http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/RickDeNatale WWR: http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/9021-rick-denatale LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickdenatale _______________________________________________ rspec-users mailing list rspec-users@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
