Monkey Patch Guard Cucumber Notification Formatter not working

Question

I want to make a simple change to the Guard Cucumber Notification Formatter to pass a priority, a bit like Guard Rspec does, so that growl styling can be improved. Small thing really.

I have tried this as a monkey patch in an initializer file but it won't work. I've tried all kinds of things but for whatever reason I cannot get it to recognize my monkey-patch when running the tests. No change I make in the patch seems to make a difference. I've tried all kinds of variants on the namespacing in case I'm making an error there - and I think that's most likely. Here's what I'm trying to apply:

initializers/guard_cucumber_patch.rb

require 'guard'
require 'guard/notifier'
require 'cucumber/formatter/console'
require 'cucumber/formatter/io'

module Guard
  class Cucumber
    class NotificationFormatter
      def step_name(keyword, step_match, status, source_indent, background, file_colon_line)
        if [:failed, :pending, :undefined].index(status)
          @rerun = true
          step_name = step_match.format_args(lambda { |param| "*#{ param }*" })

          ::Guard::Notifier.notify(step_name,
            :title => @feature_name,
            :image => icon_for(status),
            :priority => priority(icon_for(status)))
        end
      end

      # Just stolen from the guard/rspec/formatter code
      def priority(image)
        { :failed => 2,
          :pending => -1,
          :success => -2
        }[image]
      end

    end
  end
end

The original guard/cucumber/notification_formatter.rb file is as follows:

require 'guard'
require 'guard/notifier'
require 'cucumber/formatter/console'
require 'cucumber/formatter/io'

module Guard
  class Cucumber

    # The notification formatter is a Cucumber formatter that Guard::Cucumber
    # passes to the Cucumber binary. It writes the `rerun.txt` file with the failed features
    # an creates system notifications.
    #
    # @see https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/wiki/Custom-Formatters
    #
    class NotificationFormatter
      include ::Cucumber::Formatter::Console

      attr_reader :step_mother

      # Initialize the formatter.
      #
      # @param [Cucumber::Runtime] step_mother the step mother
      # @param [String, IO] path_or_io the path or IO to the feature file
      # @param [Hash] options the options
      #
      def initialize(step_mother, path_or_io, options)
        @options = options
        @file_names = []
        @step_mother = step_mother
      end

      # Notification after all features have completed.
      #
      # @param [Array[Cucumber::Ast::Feature]] features the ran features
      #
      def after_features(features)
        notify_summary
        write_rerun_features if !@file_names.empty?
      end

      # Before a feature gets run.
      #
      # @param [Cucumber::Ast::FeatureElement] feature_element
      #
      def before_feature_element(feature_element)
        @rerun = false
        @feature_name = feature_element.name
      end

      # After a feature gets run.
      #
      # @param [Cucumber::Ast::FeatureElement] feature_element
      #
      def after_feature_element(feature_element)
        if @rerun
          @file_names << feature_element.file_colon_line
          @rerun = false
        end
      end

      # Gets called when a step is done.
      #
      # @param [String] keyword the keyword
      # @param [Cucumber::StepMatch] step_match the step match
      # @param [Symbol] status the status of the step
      # @param [Integer] source_indent the source indentation
      # @param [Cucumber::Ast::Background] background the feature background
      # @param [String] file name and line number describing where the step is used
      #
      def step_name(keyword, step_match, status, source_indent, background, file_colon_line)
        if [:failed, :pending, :undefined].index(status)
          @rerun = true
          step_name = step_match.format_args(lambda { |param| "*#{ param }*" })

          ::Guard::Notifier.notify step_name, :title => @feature_name, :image => icon_for(status)
        end
      end

      private

      # Notify the user with a system notification about the
      # result of the feature tests.
      #
      def notify_summary
        icon, messages = nil, []

        [:failed, :skipped, :undefined, :pending, :passed].reverse.each do |status|
          if step_mother.steps(status).any?
            step_icon = icon_for(status)
            icon = step_icon if step_icon
            messages << dump_count(step_mother.steps(status).length, 'step', status.to_s)
          end
        end

        ::Guard::Notifier.notify messages.reverse.join(', '), :title => 'Cucumber Results', :image => icon
      end

      # Writes the `rerun.txt` file containing all failed features.
      #
      def write_rerun_features
        File.open('rerun.txt', 'w') do |f|
          f.puts @file_names.join(' ')
        end
      end

      # Gives the icon name to use for the status.
      #
      # @param [Symbol] status the cucumber status
      # @return [Symbol] the Guard notification symbol
      #
      def icon_for(status)
        case status
          when :passed
            :success
          when :pending, :undefined, :skipped
            :pending
          when :failed
            :failed
          else
            nil
        end
      end

    end
  end
end

EDIT: I am using jruby-head if that makes a difference to monkey business.

Answer 1

Guard::Cucumber makes a system call to start Cucumber in a subshell and your monkey patch is not loaded in that environment. You need to tell Cucumber to require your patch on start like the notification formatter is required.

I'm not actively developing Guard::Cucumber at the moment because I have no project with Cucumber, but I still do maintain it and I'll happily merge that improvement if you make a pull request. I think your improvement would be useful for other users as well.