Odd output for "Caused by"

[mockdeep]

I'm seeing some confusing output when a spec fails after upgrading from 3.3 5o 3.4. For the most part everything is the same, but the new Caused by section says Errno::ECONNREFUSED. Is there some setting I'm missing?

Failures:

  1) Admin::AdminController#ensure_admin! when the user is an admin does nothing
     Failure/Error: expect(flash[:error]).not_to be_nil

       expected: not nil
            got: nil
     # ./spec/controllers/admin/admin_controller/ensure_admin_bang_spec.rb:22:in `block (3 levels) in <module:Admin>'
     # /home/fletch/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.7/gems/activesupport-4.2.5/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:268:in `load'
     # /home/fletch/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.7/gems/activesupport-4.2.5/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:268:in `block in load'
     # /home/fletch/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.7/gems/activesupport-4.2.5/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:240:in `load_dependency'
     # /home/fletch/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.7/gems/activesupport-4.2.5/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:268:in `load'
     # /home/fletch/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.7/gems/spring-commands-rspec-1.0.4/lib/spring/commands/rspec.rb:18:in `call'
     # -e:1:in `<main>'
     # ------------------
     # --- Caused by: ---
     # Errno::ECONNREFUSED:
     #   Connection refused - connect(2) for "127.0.0.1" port 8989
     #   /home/fletch/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.7/gems/activesupport-4.2.5/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:268:in `load'

[myronmarston]

That is a bit odd. The Caused by: section was added in #2074. It uses Exception#cause (a new feature in Ruby 2.1). In your case, the Errno::ECONNREFUSED exception was somehow exposed as the cause from the RSpec expectation failure exception. I have no idea how that could occur -- off the top of my head, it seems likely to be a bug in Ruby.

Could you provide an executable example of the problem?

[JonRowe]

@mockdeep are you using selenium, poltergeist, or capybara-webkit or the like?

[mockdeep]

@JonRowe Yeah, we're using capybara with selenium, though these are controller specs, which shouldn't be touched by capybara.

I tried it out in another application with the same rspec version and it works as expected, so I'll see if I can narrow down the issue. It's odd because I wouldn't expect a cause to be displayed at all here, since no error was raised...

[JonRowe]

Yes thats a sideeffect of how RSpec works, we use exceptions for test failures, and in this case the cause is displayed as it was present for some reason

[mockdeep]

Okay, figured it out. We have --drb in the .rspec file of the project that is behaving strangely. Removing it made the Caused by go away, and when adding it to the other project I saw the same issue. After commenting out huge chunks of our spec_helper and Gemfile the error eventually reduced to this:

Failures:

  1) Admin::AdminController#ensure_admin! when the user is an admin does nothing
     Failure/Error: expect(flash[:error]).not_to be_nil

       expected: not nil
            got: nil
     # ./spec/controllers/admin/admin_controller/ensure_admin_bang_spec.rb:22:in `block (3 levels) in <module:Admin>'
     # ------------------
     # --- Caused by: ---
     # Errno::ECONNREFUSED:
     #   Connection refused - connect(2) for "127.0.0.1" port 8989
     #   /home/fletch/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.7/lib/ruby/2.1.0/drb/drb.rb:839:in `initialize'

We're not using a drb server, so for now will just remove the configuration.

[myronmarston]

Thanks for figuring out that the --drb flag was part of it!

I figured out the problem and fixed it in #2156.

[mockdeep]

Great, thanks!