JRuby and $! (Global Exception)

Loaded suite .
Started

Finished in 0.0 seconds.

0 tests, 0 assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors

I was really starting to hate this message while using JRuby with test/unit. Especially when the tests were just running. So why was this happening to me? Well, here’s how to create the conditions.

require 'rubygems'
require 'test/unit'
require 'blah' #this guy doesn't exist

class TestMe < TestCase
  def test_truth
    assert true
  end
end

If you run this in JRuby, this guy will fail, but won’t throw the expected exception.

Here’s why.

I only mention this because someone on the JRuby user list was having a problem like this and I think this might have been the cause. I just wanted to make sure that somewhere on the internet, the bug and one of the symptoms were associated.