When using CruiseControl.rb for continuous integration, and RSpec for testing, the defaults of CruiseControl.rb don’t play that nice with RSpec. However, that can be remedied pretty simply.
By default CruiseControl.rb runs its own set of Rake task, which invoke a couple of Rails’ tasks, including db:test:purge, db:migrate and test. You do want the first ones, but you’d rather have CruiseControl.rb run your specs instead of your the (most likely non-existing) Test::Unit tests.
Before running its default tasks it checks whether you have a specific task configured in your project settings, and if you have a task called cruise in your project’s Rakefiles. You can use both, but I just declared a task cruise in the Rakefile, and I was good to go.
That task can to pretty much the same as the original CruiseControl.rb implementation, and even be shorter since it can be tailored for your project, but invokes spec instead of test. One caveat is to set the correct environment before running db:migrate. I split out a tiny prepare task which does just that, and can do a couple of other things, if necessary, like copying a testing version of your database.yml.
desc "Task to do some preparations for CruiseControl"
task :prepare do
RAILS_ENV = 'test'
end
desc "Task for CruiseControl.rb"
task :cruise => [:prepare, "db:migrate", "spec"] do
end
Simple like that. The task spec will automatically invoke db:test:purge, so you don’t need that.