How does rspec load Rails env?

[Dewey Garwood]

Been using RSpec for a while (great testing tool!), and I'm trying to get another test framework to integrate with it (spinach-rails, specifically).

In rails 4.x, everything was working with the following Spinach config:

features/support/env.rb
  ENV["RAILS_ENV"] = "test"
  require './config/environment'
  require './spec/spec_helper.rb'
  ...

However, now when I import rails_helper.rb (in rails 5.2) in place of spec_helper.rb, I get an error indicating that it can't find the spec_helper file (required in the rails_helper file).  It seems clear to me that rails isn't autoloading the rest of the environment.

Rspec doesn't have these issues, and loads correctly, even when I remove the rspec-rails library from the rails_helper.rb.

Would you be able to help me understand how rspec/rspec-rails loads the rails env files and what role railties plays in that?  I was expecting to be able to use `require 'rails_helper'` and have everything else "just work".

Thank you for your help!

[Dewey Garwood]

Figured this out last night, with the help of some strategically placed `puts` statements.

Turns out that this piece of code here was the "secret sauce" that was allowing rspec to work: https://github.com/rspec/rspec-core/blob/master/lib/rspec/core/ruby_project.rb#L8-L14

The spec/ and lib/ folders weren't being included by spinach in the $LOAD_PATH, and thus the reason the autoload wasn't working.

For any one trying to run spinach and tie it in with the rails_helper.rb in the future, here's what I had to do to get this working:

features/support/env.rb (spinach config file)
  # Help Spinach find the spec directory for autoloading

  $LOAD_PATH.unshift(::File.expand_path('../../spec', __dir__))

  require './config/environment'

  # Most of the desired config is already in rspec

  require 'rails_helper'

  ...

Thank you very much for allowing me to crash the rspec party!

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