Vim Plumber - Run ruby tests asynchronously with named pipes

Plumber is designed to speed up your TDD cycle by using a single key mapping to run the most relevant test based on the current file in vim.

It uses unix named pipes to send the commands to a secondary session. This implies the presence of a named pipe called .plumber in the current directory and a script that continuously reads the content of pipe, executing the commands it receives:

#!/bin/bash

DEFAULT_PIPE_NAME=".plumber"
PIPE_NAME="${1:-$DEFAULT_PIPE_NAME}"

if [ ! -p $PIPE_NAME ]; then
  echo "Created pipe ${PIPE_NAME}..."
  mkfifo $PIPE_NAME
fi

echo "Waiting for commands!"

while true; do
  COMMAND=$(cat $PIPE_NAME)
  echo Running ${COMMAND}...
  sh -c "$COMMAND"
done

The default mapping for invoking the plugin is <leader>t. In a spec file, this will run rspec <filename>. In a test-unit file, this will run ruby -Itest <filename>. In a cucumber feature file, this will run cucumber <filename>.

Repeating

If you invoke the plugin (by default, with <leader>t), and neither the current file nor the alternate is a test, spec or feature, plumber will simply send the most recent command instead. This can be quite helpful in situations where you are editing a related file, or in the case of cucumber, step definitions or a view.

The |plumber| and |plumber-focused| invocations each store their own command, so you can use the focused one elsewhere in a test suite while still setting the normal one, or vice-versa.

Focused

Plumber also comes with bindings to run focused tests. This is accomplished by appending the current line number to the test command. In cucumber, this runs the scenario under the cursor. In rspec, this runs only the example or group under the cursor.

The default mapping for focused test output is <leader>T.

Send anything you want!

You can use the "Plumber" function to send arbitrary commands to the pipe, i.e.:

:nmap ,x :call Plumber("echo %")<CR>

Mappings

The following are available:

• <leader>t: Normal invocation
• <leader>T: Focused test (appends line number)