Testing — Living Without RSpec

Anyone who's set up a Ruby test environment knows. Install RSpec, configure spec_helper.rb, set up FactoryBot, add DatabaseCleaner, connect shoulda-matchers... 30 minutes before your first test line runs.

Go? Create a _test.go file and run go test. Done.

Filename Is the Convention

Tests for user.go go in user_test.go. Files ending in _test.go are only compiled during go test. Instead of Ruby's separate spec/ directory, test files sit next to source files.

RSpec's describe/it vs Go's Test Functions

Ruby:

RSpec.describe User do
  it "has a name" do
    expect(user.name).to eq("kim")
  end
end

Go:

func TestUserName(t *testing.T) {
    user := User{Name: "kim"}
    if user.Name != "kim" {
        t.Errorf("expected kim, got %s", user.Name)
    }
}

If you're used to RSpec's DSL, Go's testing looks primitive. No expect/to matchers. Direct if-statement comparisons. This is Go's "standard library is enough" philosophy.

Table-Driven Tests — Go's Core Pattern

Go defines test cases as struct slices for multiple cases:

tests := []struct{ input int; want int }{
    {1, 2}, {2, 4}, {3, 6},
}

Similar role to RSpec's shared_examples.

go test -v, -run, -cover

go test -v — verbose (like RSpec --format documentation)
go test -run TestUser — run specific tests (like rspec spec/models/user_spec.rb)
go test -cover — coverage check (like simplecov)

All built-in, no gems needed.