Rspec Quickfix Formatter¶ ↑

Provides a rspec formatter that outputs a file vim’s quickfix feature will understand. This allows nice integration between rspec test failures and the vim editor.

Similar Projects¶ ↑

Requirements¶ ↑

rspec 1.3.X
vim 7.X

I haven’t tried using this with rspec 2 yet.

Install¶ ↑

There are two parts to this install: 1) Setting up rspec to use the formatter and write a file in the quickfix format, and 2) setting up vim to read from the quickfix file.

Setting up rspec¶ ↑

There are a couple different ways to achieve this. I prefer the first option, but the others should work too.

configure with spec.opts¶ ↑

Add the following lines to your spec.opts file:

--require rubygems
--require rspec-quickfix-formatter
--format Spec::Runner::Formatter::QuickfixFormatter:tmp/quickfix

The path passed to –format will be the location that the quickfix file will be written to disk. I always run my specs from the projects root directory (which always has tmp directories), so the setting of tmp/quickfix works well for me. This path will need to match the path in your vim configuration.

configure in spec_helper.rb¶ ↑

configure using spec command line options¶ ↑

Setting up vim¶ ↑

There are two aspects to configuring vim, defining the error format, and loading the file into the quickfix window.

Use this command to set vim’s error format:

:set errorformat=%f:%l\ %n\ %m

Use this command to open the quickfix file:

:cfile tmp/quickfix

Or create a shortcut:

map <leader>s :cfile tmp/quickfix<CR>

The tmp/quickfix needs to be the path to your quickfix file. Since I start vim in the root of my project, a relative path works well for me.

For more information about the quickfix and related location list features in vim, see:

:help quickfix

Todos¶ ↑

Explore other rspec config options and document them
rspec 2
Document version numbers and how they relate to rspec compatibility
it may be possible to leverage the default errorformat instead of configuring a simple one.

Future work¶ ↑

add vim commands in quickfix mode to display a full backtrace for an error.

Bugs¶ ↑

I noticed some multiline error messages which confused quickfix.

Note on Patches/Pull Requests¶ ↑

Fork the project.
Make your feature addition or bug fix.
Add tests for it. This is important so I don’t break it in a future version unintentionally.
Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.