#Levelfly #Ruby / #Rails upgrade 2026 update: we Put Together a team! 🤩

Delighted to be linked back up with one of the CUNY / BMCC academics who originally initiated (and is still using) Levelfly, and a seasoned tester & project manager from Neuronic. We're full-tilt to try and get this update finished in time for the next cohort of students who will be using the software soon.

I'm liking how the #RSpec tests are shaping up overall though.

I'd be really interested to get some review from someone with more experience; I did find a few examples of "request" specs (which is the main layer I've decided to start with) around, but there seem to be several different taste preferences going on.

So far, having a "context" for each combination of HTTP verb + endpoint is working out reasonably, and then separate blocks to test unauthenticated / unauthorised / success

#RSpec interactive debugging with #Neovim: I tried a lot, I failed a lot.

I got this working for other languages ( #Python and #CSharp) and it was a HUGE help, taking away one of the main things I need to leave my editor for.

But something is blowing up and I'm still relatively new to Neotest, DAP, and the various plumbing between them and the test runners.

Some updates from the last few days:

After that, I want to focus on the #Docker image.

Somehow – despite applying a couple of Dockerfile tricks I've picked up since my last #Levelfly containerisation work back in 2021 – the image has ballooned from 400MB to 1.8GB, and I'd like to get that back down to size.

Part of this will likely involve publishing separate "development" and "production" images, to save new project contributors from a docker build process.

Firstly: test coverage. We're currently at around 40% (it's varied up and down about 3% between #Rails / #Ruby versions, which has been interesting!)

I'm not shooting for 100% – I've made the mistake before of making tests too brittle with respect to changes, and at the end of the day 100% lines covered doesn't necessarily mean 100% of functionality covered anyway.

But some of the key models and controllers are very minimally tested, which feels worth improving given the scale of the changes.

And, with some fresh inspiration, back to my solo hackathon, Day 8 👷

"If it upgrades, upgrade it. If it doesn't upgrade, release the version constraint" is the "If it moves, salute it, if it doesn't move, pick it up" of #Ruby

Having the funniest issue where browser tests only run if I switch to a specific GNOME workspace, then away from it, then back to it again? Otherwise I get an HTTP timeout 🤡

Getting basic #RSpec coverage for the key endpoints going as soon as I'd upgraded to Rails 5 was a great move; those tests have already caught all kinds of issues with the new versions.

Most satisfying thing so far has probably been finally understanding RSpec enough to be useful – specifically getting my head further around the difference between fixtures, seeds, and factories.

(And then completely ripping out the fixtures lol)