> When Cucumber (the original ruby implementation) become somewhat
> mature a couple of years ago I was thinking: Cucumber can run on JRuby
> as well, and with some glue code it should be possible to write Step
> Definitions in various JVM languages such as Java, Groovy, Scala,
> Clojure etc. So Cuke4Duke was born.

> It has worked well for some, less well for others. Since day 1 it has
> had several inherent problems:

> 1) Hard to install. Cuke4Duke is based on JRuby, the Cucumber gem and
> the Gherkin gem. Installing these in a Java environment is hard.
> 2) Slow. Every time you want to run a feature you have to wait for
> JRuby to boot.
> 3) Hard to use. Maven makes it a little easier perhaps, but Maven
> comes with its own warts.
> 4) Unstable. Consider the blocks that build up Cuke4Duke: JVM, JRuby,
> RubyGems, Cucumber gem, Gherkin gem, Maven. For the sake of
> simplicity, let's assume that each of those exists in 4 versions. That
> means some 15.000 different combinations people might have on their
> machines. And then there is Windows/Linux/OS X differences on top of
> that.
> 5) Hard to test. Given the number of different permutations this
> speaks for itself.
> 6) Hard to package and release. A hodge podge of Maven and Rake, plus
> dealing with all of the dependencies.

> The problems have been getting worse lately, and it's time to retire
> the project because of its inherent flaws. As of today I will no
> longer maintain Cuke4Duke. Instead I'll spend my time working on a
> better replacement.

> As some of you may know, I have been working on a pure JVM
> implementation of Cucumber for a while. It incorporates the good parts
> of Cuke4Duke, but not the bad ones (I hope). I think it's good enough
> that some people can start playing with it. Here is where it's at:

> * Mostly API compatible with Cuke4Duke
> * Gherkin features can remain unchanged
> * Step Definitions and Hooks will have to change some import statements
> * The Java implementation is tested better than the other JVM
> languages like Groovy etc, but they are there too.
> * Scala has no support yet, will add that later.
> * You can run features with JUnit
> * A (JUnit-free) CLI is in progress (handy for e.g. Clojure or other
> languages that don't use JUnit)
> * It will be a lot faster
> * Not a single line of Ruby and no JRuby

> There are no docs yet, that will come later. I'm looking for people
> who have some small to medium sized Cuke4Duke projects who would like
> to try switching over. This will expose what the missing features are,
> what needs to be documented etc.

> Cucumber-JVM is currently not released anywhere, so you'll have to
> build it yourself: https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-jvm

> For those who try - don't expect everything to work. I do need your
> help testing it out to make it stabilise faster and get the features
> it needs. I'll be here answering any questions you might have. I'm
> *very* excited about this project! And we need contributors! Show the
> Ruby community that the Java/Groovy/Clojure/Scala people can
> contribute to open source too!

> Cheers,
> Aslak

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