Build and package up git repositories as test fixtures.

gem install repo-fixture

require 'repo-fixture'

Test fixtures are static files that contain data used in tests. For example, you might be writing and testing a YAML parser that needs to recognize various types of YAML data. You could test these various types by creating a number of .yml fixture files that you then feed to your parser.

RepoFixture brings this concept to git repositories. It facilitates creating and packaging the repositories into individual fixture files (currently only zip is supported). RepoFixture can also load fixture files and expand the repo's contents into your temp folder, creating a pristine test environment every time.

To create a new repo-based fixture:

my_fixture = RepoFixture.create do |fixture|
  fixture.copy_files(Dir.glob('path/to/files/**/**')) do |file|
    file.sub('path/to/files', '')  # the path in the zip file itself
  end

  fixture.add_all
  fixture.commit('Committing all files')
end

Note that the fixture object in the example above responds to all the methods in TmpRepo.

Once you've put your fixture repo into the state you want, use the export method to generate a fixture file:

my_fixture.export('path/to/my_fixture.zip')

It's always a good idea to clean up after yourself as well:

my_fixture.unlink

Once you've created a fixture file, you might want to load it again:

my_fixture = RepoFixture.load('./path/to/my_fixture.zip')
my_fixture.working_dir  # => somewhere in your tmp directory

No external requirements.

bundle exec rake should do the trick.

• Cameron C. Dutro: http://github.com/camertron