Using Spock with Scala

[stephanos]

For quite some time I used Spock in my Scala-based project. But
unfortunately it just doesn't work for me anymore - there are just too
many interoperability issues between Scala and Groovy.

Now I am really in a difficult situation: I love most of Spock -
certainly much more than the Scala test frameworks - but I love Scala
much more than Groovy. So I was thinking about how to have the best of
both worlds.

1) 'Port' Spock to Scala
-> Well, this would probably be too much work...

2) Build Scala wrapper for Spock
-> Would this work somehow - or is it tied too much to Groovy?

And because the most important feature of Spock for me is it's
wonderful "Condition not satisfied" output - if I had to choose one
thing about it, this would be it:
3) Integrate ConditionNotSatisfiedError etc. with Scala testing
framework
-> Possible?

What do you think?

[Peter Niederwieser]

Stephanos,

when I started Spock in 2007, I actually wanted to build it in Scala. But back then I couldn't find a way to do so, and eventually chose Groovy instead.

ad 1)
I've been thinking about this from time to time, but it would take a lot of work. Also Scala already has several testing frameworks, and it's unclear if there is room for another one. Another factor is that I don't get to use Scala in my day job anymore (although I'd love to).

ad 2)
Most of Spock's innovative features are powered by a compiler plugin. So a Scala wrapper isn't possible. One could certainly try to make the Spock runtime and library language-agnostic (they are written in Java and aren't deeply tied to Groovy), but the hard part would be to write a compiler plugin for Scala.

ad 3)
This has also been on my mind for some time. Again, it would require a Scala compiler plugin.

To summarize, I can't promise that I'll ever try to port Spock to Scala. If someone with strong Scala (compiler) knowledge would like to work on a port, I'd certainly be thrilled, and would help where I can.

Meanwhile, if the impedance mismatch between Groovy and Scala gets too big, it's probably better to use one of the Scala testing frameworks. You could still use Spock for higher-level integration/acceptance tests, for example together with Geb (http://geb.codehaus.org).

Cheers,
Peter

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[stephanos]

I was afraid of that :-)
I appreciate the extensive answer.

Cheers,
Stephanos