Cucumber is very slow when running tests [Tested on two different Fedora machines]

Question

I am new to BDD. Every time I try using cucumber, I find it pretty slow. I have tried with Rails 3.0.9 & 3.1 on two different machines. One of machines is an old IBM thinkpad laptop with 2 GB ram; and the other one is a PC with 4 GB RAM [I can get exact specifications if required]. Both run Fedora 14.

Even with a new application with no scnerios Cucumber take minutes. Here is how it goes:

$ cucumber 
Using the default profile...
--- about 2 minutes delay---- and then it says:
0 scenarios
0 steps
0m0.000s

In contrast, Rspec is instant:

rspec
No examples found.

Finished in 0.00005 seconds
0 examples, 0 failures

While cucumber says it took 0m0.000s ; it has taken about 2 minutes in reality. And, RSpec was instant and shows the time correctly as well: 0.00005 seconds.

Is this normal. Do I need some additional Gems Or settings to make the process faster.

Update: Here is more data:

First with cucumber:

$time cucumber
Using the default profile...
0 scenarios
0 steps
0m0.000s

real    0m53.489s
user    0m37.051s
sys 0m1.973s

and then with rspec

$ time rspec spec/
No examples found.


Finished in 0.00005 seconds
0 examples, 0 failures

real    0m1.925s
user    0m1.032s
sys 0m0.155s

Answer 1

You're blaming the slowness on the wrong tool. What's slow is Ruby and Rails' startup time, not Cucumber. This is well known.

Answer 2

Ok. Used Spork, and here is the data again:

Rspec is faster then earlier even with no examples, I can feel the difference:

$ time rspec --drb spec/

Finished in 0.00182 seconds
0 examples, 0 failures

real    0m1.495s
user    0m0.952s
sys 0m0.147s

And Here is the data for Cucumber:

... suspense....

$ time cucumber --drb
Using the default profile...
Disabling profiles...
0 scenarios
0 steps
0m0.000s

real    0m3.775s
user    0m2.187s
sys 0m0.367s

Wow, there is marked difference now. If you get "undefined method `World' for main:Object (NoMethodError)" Please use spork version 0.9.0.rc9.

Update: Here are the steps, if someone else needs them [Ruby 1.9.2 + Rails 3.1]:

Gemfile:

group :development do
  gem 'rspec-rails'
end

group :test do
  gem 'database_cleaner'
  gem 'rails3-generators'
  gem 'factory_girl_rails'
  gem 'cucumber-rails'
  gem 'capybara'
  gem 'spork', '0.9.0.rc9'
end

Then, run bundle install:

bundle install

[If you are using rspec]

rails g rspec:install
spork --bootstrap

edit spec/spec_helper.rb and follow instructions. Basically put everything between

Spork.prefork do
end

for cucumber:

rails g cucumber:install --spork

Run spork

bundle exec spork cuc

Run tests:

rspec --drb spec/
cucumber --drb

Enjoy BDD!! Autotest next!

Update:

You can add --drb to .rspec to run rspec without the --drb option.

Update:

Just realized I don't need --drb with cucumber.. with a spork server running, following would be sufficient:

cucumber features/

Answer 3

You're not the only one, I stopped using cucumber because it just took too long on my computer. My RSpec is a little bit slow only if I get a lot of examples (70-100ish) compared to the Rails-casts and other peoples tutorials I've watched but to me its fine(10-12 sec). Cucumber took the same amount of time on mine, my specs are:

Windows 7 64bit
Intel i3 3.19 Ghz
4.00 Gb Ram

And it still drags ass, it's annoying that I have to upgrade my computer just to get this to run fast! It a could be Windows 7 thing.