How to debug rake spec not executing tests; infinite hanging issue (rails 3)

Question

Using rake 0.9.2, rspec, expectations, mocks 2.6.0, rspec-core 2.6.4, rspec-rails 2.6.1

When I execute rake rails, or rspec spec path/to/spec I get normal output up until I'd expect to see the tests actually execute, then nothing further. I have to kill the process kill-9 %1 to terminate the task.

My gemfile:

source 'http://rubygems.org'

gem 'rails', '3.0.4'
gem 'rake', '0.9.2'

# Bundle edge Rails instead:
# gem 'rails', :git => 'git://github.com/rails/rails.git'

# gem 'sqlite3-ruby', :require => 'sqlite3'
gem 'warden'
gem 'devise', "= 1.2.1"
gem 'devise_invitable'
gem 'mysql'
gem 'will_paginate', "~> 3.0.pre2"
gem 'acts-as-taggable-on'
gem 'acts_as_list'
gem 'activemerchant'
gem 'braintree'
gem 'bartt-ssl_requirement', :require => 'ssl_requirement'
gem "paperclip"
gem 'jeditable-rails'
gem 'rdiscount'
gem "nifty-generators", :group => :development

gem "exception_notification", :git => "git://github.com/rails/exception_notification", :require => 'exception_notifier'

# Deploy with Capistrano
gem 'capistrano'
gem 'capistrano-ext'



# Bundle gems for the local environment. Make sure to
# put test-only gems in this group so their generators
# and rake tasks are available in development mode:
group :development, :test do
  gem 'webrat', ">=0.7.2"
  gem "rspec-rails"
  gem "ZenTest"
  #gem "autotest"
  #gem "autotest-rails"
  gem "cucumber",         :git => "git://github.com/cucumber/cucumber.git"
  gem "database_cleaner", :git => 'git://github.com/bmabey/database_cleaner.git'
  gem "cucumber-rails", ">= 0.3.2",   :git => "git://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-rails.git"
  gem 'factory_girl_rails'
  gem "capybara"
  #gem "capybara-envjs"
  gem "launchy"
  gem "spork"
  #gem "ruby-debug"
  gem "cancan"
end

Output from shell:

bill$ rake spec
/Users/bill/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-head/gems/bundler-1.0.0/lib/bundler.rb:197: warning: Insecure world writable dir /opt in PATH, mode 040777
/Users/bill/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-head/bin/ruby -S bundle exec rspec ./spec/controllers/products_controller_spec.rb ./spec/controllers/roles_controller_spec.rb ./spec/controllers/users_controller_spec.rb ./spec/models/product_spec.rb ./spec/models/role_spec.rb ./spec/models/user_spec.rb
/Users/bill/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-head/gems/bundler-1.0.0/lib/bundler.rb:197: warning: Insecure world writable dir /opt in PATH, mode 040777
/Users/bill/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-head/gems/bundler-1.0.0/lib/bundler.rb:197: warning: Insecure world writable dir /opt in PATH, mode 040777

And then nothing further until I kill. Running with --trace doesn't provide any additional info. I'm sure I've got to be doing something simply silly. This appears to have started with recent issues I was having with rake versions, hence the upgrade to rake 0.9.2, although I have no concrete proof of any direct correlation. Thanks for any suggestions on how to debug this better.

Answer 1

Ugh, turns out it was an issue with one of the fixtures files. I don't use them, normally factories and stubs, and there was one with incomplete specification so it looks like rspec was just hanging on that. I figured it out by narrowing down the command to test different groups, like 'rake spec:models', which worked, then 'rake spec:controllers' which hung. Went into the generated specs and noticed the lines loading the fixtures, removed them and voila. Never dull...;-)

Answer 2

UPDATE: I found what seems to be a permenant solution to the problem from this question. I added the line below to my config/environments/test.rb.

config.active_record.maintain_test_schema = false

I encountered this exact same problem. On a whim, I decided to run rake db:test:prepare, which seemed to resolve it for me, at least temporarily. After running that, I can run rake again without incident once, but if I run it again, I encounter the same problem as before. I seem to be stuck in this cycle now. This article helped shed some light on the subject, but I still don't know how to permanently solve the problem.