Why does Guard run ALL my RSpec specs on every change?

This testing stack is behaving unreliably. Sometimes when I run guard, it performs adequately with the guard-rspec gem and will only run the file that has been changed. At least, if the test fails it will stop with that single modified file.

But if that test passes, all bets are off. It will continue to run ALL tests when a single file is changed. On a good-sized application, this is extremely impractical and frustrating to see all tests run every time a file is saved.

My Guardfile is as follows. Notice that I had to change where it was pointing to RSpec specs. By default it thinks you are going to have a specs directory, and that all of your specs will be all jumbled into that one directory. I don't know anybody that tests like that, so it's a funny default to include. It should be looking for subdirectories under specs.

# A sample Guardfile
# More info at https://github.com/guard/guard#readme

guard 'spork', :cucumber => false, :rspec_env => { 'RAILS_ENV' => 'test' } do
  watch('config/application.rb')
  watch('config/environment.rb')
  watch('config/environments/test.rb')
  watch(%r{^config/initializers/.+\.rb$})
  watch('Gemfile')
  watch('Gemfile.lock')
  watch('spec/spec_helper.rb') { :rspec }
end

guard 'rspec', :version => 2, :cli => "--drb" do
  watch(%r{^spec/(.*)/(.+)_spec\.rb$})
  watch(%r{^lib/(.+)\.rb$})     { |m| "spec/lib/#{m[1]}_spec.rb" }
  watch('spec/spec_helper.rb')  { "spec" }

  # Rails examples
  watch(%r{^app/(.+)\.rb$})                           { |m| "spec/#{m[1]}_spec.rb" }
  watch(%r{^app/(.*)(\.erb|\.haml)$})                 { |m| "spec/#{m[1]}#{m[2]}_spec.rb" }
  watch(%r{^app/controllers/(.+)_(controller)\.rb$})  { |m| ["spec/routing/#{m[1]}_routing_spec.rb", "spec/#{m[2]}s/#{m[1]}_#{m[2]}_spec.rb", "spec/acceptance/#{m[1]}_spec.rb"] }
  watch(%r{^spec/support/(.+)\.rb$})                  { "spec" }
  watch('config/routes.rb')                           { "spec/routing" }
  watch('app/controllers/application_controller.rb')  { "spec/controllers" }

  # Capybara features specs
  watch(%r{^app/views/(.+)/.*\.(erb|haml)$})          { |m| "spec/features/#{m[1]}_spec.rb" }
  watch(%r{^app/views/(.+)/.*\.(erb|haml)$})          { |m| "spec/requests/#{m[1]}_spec.rb" }

  # Turnip features and steps
  watch(%r{^spec/acceptance/(.+)\.feature$})
  watch(%r{^spec/acceptance/steps/(.+)_steps\.rb$})   { |m| Dir[File.join("**/#{m[1]}.feature")][0] || 'spec/acceptance' }
end

Solution

The guard-rspec gem has a parameter which controls whether all tests are run after a successful test. It defaults to true, but can be changed to false to get the behavior you're looking for.

See the :all_after_pass option at https://github.com/guard/guard-rspec