RSpec 4.1 breaks on Rails 4.2

[tagliala]

What Ruby, Rails and RSpec versions are you using?

Ruby version: 2.4.10
Rails version: 4.2.11.3
RSpec version: 4.1.0

Observed behaviour

RSpec 4.1 does not work start on Rails 4.2.11.3, while 4.0 does

     Failure/Error: example.run
     
     NameError:
       undefined local variable or method `use_transactional_tests' for #<RSpec::ExampleGroups::Welcome::Index:0x00007fcb64cdbf40>
       Did you mean?  use_transactional_fixtures

Tracked down with git bisect down to 073daad

Expected behaviour

Keeps working with Rails 4.1 or gemspec specifies >= 5.0 to prevent update to 4.1

https://github.com/rspec/rspec-rails/blob/main/rspec-rails.gemspec#L36

Can you provide an example app?

Travis CI failure: https://travis-ci.org/github/diowa/ruby2-rails4-bootstrap-heroku/builds/761888443

[JonRowe]

👋 RSpec-Rails 4.x maintains a soft support for Rails 4.2, but we don't actively maintain it, if you'd like to tackle this in a PR please do and I'll release it as a bugfix.

[yo-it-engineer]

Hi. We just encountered the same problem too. For the time being we also fixed version limited rspec-rails version to 4.0.1.

[pirj]

I see no changes from 4.0.1 https://github.com/rspec/rspec-rails/blob/4-1-maintenance/lib/rspec/rails/fixture_support.rb#L27
to 4.1.0 https://github.com/rspec/rspec-rails/blob/v4.1.0/lib/rspec/rails/fixture_support.rb#L27
or 4.1.1 https://github.com/rspec/rspec-rails/blob/v4.1.1/lib/rspec/rails/fixture_support.rb#L27

and Travis suggests that this line is involved https://github.com/diowa/ruby2-rails4-bootstrap-heroku/blob/8a9810d2e4cdc2f9df70a0e4e172afe51962b36b/spec/support/database_cleaner.rb#L12, but doesn't provide any details.

Can you please provide a more detailed backtrace to pinpoint the issue? @yo-it-engineer maybe you have one?

[JonRowe]

I see no changes from 4.0.1 https://github.com/rspec/rspec-rails/blob/4-1-maintenance/lib/rspec/rails/fixture_support.rb#L27

You appear to be looking at 4-1-maintenance there @pirj

[yo-it-engineer]

@pirj I'm not sure if I can explain it well, but when our Rails 4.1 4.2 system run rspec, this line caused method not found error.

NameError:
       undefined local variable or method `use_transactional_tests' for #<RSpec::ExampleGroups::Anonymous:0x000055eac3f36e08>

https://github.com/rspec/rspec-rails/blob/v4.1.1/lib/rspec/rails/fixture_support.rb#L16

the use_transactional_tests method is not exist in Rails 4.1 4.2 I guess. I think it was introduced since Rails 5.x .

I try to tweak around and this is the way I was able to get rid of the error:

[tagliala]

Hi,

I've tracked down the issue to 073daad

If you can live with a try, I have a fix at tagliala/rspec-rails@12872f9

No problems into adding a conditional against rails version or a respond_to?

edit:

I think @yo-it-engineer's solution is more accurate, but I don't know if Rails 4.2 as the same issue described in the comments, I should run specs against Rails 4.2 on my development machine

[pirj]

Nice research, @tagliala ! 👏

WDYT of mimicking Rails 4.2's behaviour and doing it like it does? https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/0ecaaf76d1b79cf2717cdac754e55b4114ad6599/activerecord/lib/active_record/fixtures.rb#L922
Since 5.0 this method has changed to https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/ac6aa32f7cf66264ba87eabed7c042bb60bcf3a2/activerecord/lib/active_record/fixtures.rb#L958
I'd suggest defining this method inside a if ::Rails::VERSION::STRING > '5' conditional.

[tagliala]

Please find a Draft PR at #2479

It contains an approach like the one suggested by @yo-it-engineer and uniform to the approach used in the included block (check for > '5', else assumes 4)