This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by Rick DeNatale. Original Post: The RSpec-Caboo.se Brouhaha Feed Title: Talk Like A Duck Feed URL: http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/articles.atom Feed Description: Musings on Ruby, Rails, and other topics by an experienced object technologist. Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by Rick DeNatale Latest Posts From Talk Like A Duck

A recent entry by Courtenay on the caboo.se blog has been causing a minor furore in the Ruby community.

It looks like the problem experienced by Courtenay was caused by an interaction between RSpec and the new Rails 2.1.x gem configuration mechanisms, a problem which had been reported to, and solved by, the RSpec team, two weeks, and one week respectively, before the caboo.se post.

One lesson that could and should be learned from this is that with the power of object oriented frameworks, comes the need to be careful in managing upgrades. This is particularly true when multiple, independently developed, frameworks are combined. This is why techniques to manage the configuration of a particular application, including the versions of ‘vendored’ components is so essential.

I wrote about the issues in dealing with framework evolution quite a while ago, it was the key argument I had with the now retired head of a certain large company based near Seattle.

I’ve been a pretty heavy user of RSpec for about a year now, and have updated several times. It’s always been a pleasant experience, albeit not without having to make minor changes to my specs. And no one has forced me to do it, so that I can pick my time. The RSpec team has always been good about eating its own dog food, with pretty extensive self-specification/testing. Of course, it’s impossible to cover 100% of unforeseen problems.

I’ve had more problems with Rails upgrades of late, particularly with some of the recent changes to Active Record. Although Rails has a fairly large test suite, it’s very hard for it to cover all the ways that the many Rails application actually use and stress the framework.

But giving up is my last option, first choice is to keep evolving my code as the frameworks evolve, but to use configuration management to allow me to do it on my schedule.