The Importance of Being Specific

Do not do this in your .autotest file.

Autotest.add_hook :initialize do |at|
  at.add_exception 'vendor'
  nil
end

Instead, be specific.

Autotest.add_hook :initialize do |at|
  at.add_exception %r{^vendor/}
  nil
end

One of the benefits of autotest is that it can save you time. It’s not saving you time when you spend 15 minutes trying to figure out why it isn’t running any of the tests from vendor_controller_test.rb. Be good to your tools, and they will be good to you. Tell them exactly what it is you’d like to do, and they will be happy to oblige. Read the documentation about a feature when you use it – then maybe you’ll realize that a method actually expects a Regexp as an argument.

If you don’t read the documentation, you risk being a tool… Like me.