webrat's have_selector does not give deprecation warning in rspec 2.99 but fails in rspec 3

[richardwan]

if i understand the info in http://rspec.info/upgrading-from-rspec-2/ correctly, an rspec 3 failure with no corresponding 2.99 deprecation warning is considered a bug.

details:

• using webrat 0.7.3 with expect(some_string).to have_selector 'blahblah', ran fine with no deprecation warning in 2.99

• upgraded to rspec 3 and it started trying to call has_selector? on the string and gave an error

• worked around the issue by putting a declaration in spec_helper

  def have_selector(name, attributes = {}, &block)
  Webrat::Matchers::HaveSelector.new(name, attributes, &block)
  end

[myronmarston]

Thanks for reporting this. It looks like we just forgot to add a deprecation to 2.99 for this :(. Specifically, this is what happened from what I can tell:

• In rspec-rails 2.99, it included the webrat matchers via a bunch of config.include statements in rspec/rails/vendor/webrat, which was always loaded from rspec/rails.
• In Removes --webrat rspec-rails#850 the --webrat flag was removed from the generator (which did not need a deprecation in 2.99 since it didn't affect existing code) but we also removed the line from rspec/rails that loaded rspec/rails/vendor/webrat. No deprecation was added for the changes in this PR since we (wrongly) thought it was just affecting the generator.
• @cupakromer removed the rspec/rails/vendor/webrat file in Remove remaining vendored webrat. rspec-rails#1011 but thought it was a no-op since there were no references to the file (since the prior PR had already removed the require but we didn't notice that...) so we didn't add a deprecation then, either.

So we just flat-out missed the deprecation on this one. Sorry about that!

@cupakromer, do you want to work up a PR for 2.99 that adds a deprecation for this?

To fix it, you can essentially bring back what the deleted file was doing in 2.x:

begin
  require 'webrat'
rescue LoadError
end

RSpec.configure do |c|
  if defined?(Webrat)
    c.include Webrat::Matchers, :type => :request
    c.include Webrat::Matchers, :type => :controller
    c.include Webrat::Matchers, :type => :view
    c.include Webrat::Matchers, :type => :helper
    c.include Webrat::Matchers, :type => :mailer

    c.include Webrat::Methods,  :type => :request
    c.include Webrat::Methods,  :type => :controller

    module RequestInstanceMethods
      def last_response
        @response
      end
    end

    c.include RequestInstanceMethods, :type => :request

    c.before :type => :controller do
      Webrat.configure {|w| w.mode = :rails}
    end

    c.before :type => :request do
      Webrat.configure {|w| w.mode = :rack}
    end
  end
end

You may not need all of that but for full backwards compatility with what was happening in 2.x it's all needed.

[richardwan]

thanks. by the way awesome job with the whole 2.99, transpec, 3.x upgrade path. it handles so many cases.

[mikegee]

As time passes, the value of fixing this becomes lower than the effort required. Perhaps we've already crossed the threshold were this should be closed unfixed?

[myronmarston]

Agree. Closing.