timecop-rspec

⌚️ Timecop::Rspec

if ci_badges.map(&:color).detect { it != "green"} ☝️ let me know on Discord or RubyForum, as I may have missed the notification.

if ci_badges.map(&:color).all? { it == "green"} 👇️ send money so I can do more of this. FLOSS maintenance is now my full-time job.

👣 How will this project approach the September 2025 hostile takeover of RubyGems? 🚑️

I’ve summarized my thoughts in this blog post.

🌻 Synopsis

Timecop::Rspec provides Timecop time-machines for RSpec that allow you to time-travel test examples, context/describes, and/or your entire test suite.

The gem was never released by its original author, who later moved on to work in other languages. Zach Taylor and Tim Mertens did a great job with it, and people have been hoping it would be published. It has a great API, and I was about to build this exact thing myself, so I am glad I found this. I’ve modernized everything, added more tests and documentation, and released it. Thanks to the long-term stability of both RSpec and Timecop, the original code still works perfectly.

Improvements over original:

The original only supported Ruby 2.2+, but I’ve backfilled support to 1.9.2 (to align with the max-min version between RSpec & Timecop).
Added tests for 100% line coverage.
Added documentation for all public methods.
removed runtime (and dev) dependency on activesupport.

I expect the current release of this gem to be compatible with Ruby 1.9.2+, but it is only tested on CI against Ruby 2.3+, due to the inherent limitations of GitHub Actions.

Alternative Libraries

I have only found one, but it didn't have the API I wanted. - [rspec-timecop](https://github.com/sugarcrm/rspec-timecop) - A very different approach

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💡 Info you can shake a stick at

Tokens to Remember
Works with JRuby
Works with Truffle Ruby
Works with MRI Ruby 4
Works with MRI Ruby 3
Works with MRI Ruby 2
Works with MRI Ruby 1
Support & Community
Source
Documentation
Compliance
Style
Maintainer 🎖️
`...` 💖	🧊 🐙 🛖 🧪

Compatibility

Compatible with MRI Ruby 1.9.2+, JRuby, and TruffleRuby. CI workflows and Appraisals are generated for MRI Ruby 2.4+. This test floor is configured by ruby.test_minimum in .kettle-jem.yml and may be higher than the gem’s runtime compatibility floor when legacy Rubies are not practical for the current toolchain.

The amazing test matrix is powered by the kettle-dev stack.

How kettle-dev manages complexity in tests

Gem	Source	Role
appraisal2	GitHub	multi-dependency Appraisal matrix generation
appraisal2-rubocop	GitHub	RuboCop Appraisal generator integration
kettle-dev	GitHub	development, release, and CI workflow tooling
kettle-jem	GitHub	Appraisals & CI workflow templates
kettle-soup-cover	GitHub	SimpleCov coverage policy and reporting
kettle-test	GitHub	standard test runner and coverage harness
rubocop-lts	GitHub	Ruby-version-aware linting
turbo_tests2	GitHub	parallel test execution

Federated DVCS

Find this repo on federated forges (Coming soon!)

Federated DVCS Repository	Status	Issues	PRs	Wiki	CI
🧪 galtzo-floss/timecop-rspec on GitLab	The Truth	💚	💚	💚	🐭 Tiny Matrix
🧊 galtzo-floss/timecop-rspec on CodeBerg	An Ethical Mirror (Donate)	💚	💚	➖	⭕️ No Matrix
🐙 galtzo-floss/timecop-rspec on GitHub	Another Mirror	💚	💚	💚	💯 Full Matrix

Enterprise Support

Available as part of the Tidelift Subscription.

Need enterprise-level guarantees?

The maintainers of this and thousands of other packages are working with Tidelift to deliver commercial support and maintenance for the open source packages you use to build your applications. Save time, reduce risk, and improve code health, while paying the maintainers of the exact packages you use.

💡Subscribe for support guarantees covering all your FLOSS dependencies
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💡Tidelift pays maintainers to maintain the software you depend on!
📊@Pointy Haired Boss: An enterprise support subscription is “never gonna let you down”, and supports open source maintainers

Alternatively:

✨ Installation

Install the gem and add to the application’s Gemfile by executing:

bundle add timecop-rspec

If bundler is not being used to manage dependencies, install the gem by executing:

gem install timecop-rspec

⚙️ Configuration

Regular Time Machine

# spec_helper.rb or some configuration file loaded by spec_helper.rb

require "timecop/rspec"

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.around(:example) do |example|
    Timecop::Rspec.time_machine.run(example)
  end
end

The regular time machine will run each example at the time specified by the RSpec metadata, or the global travel time.

Sequential Time Machine

# spec_helper.rb or some configuration file loaded by spec_helper.rb

require "timecop/rspec"

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.around(:example) do |example|
    Timecop::Rspec.time_machine(sequential: true).run(example)
  end
end

The sequential time machine is almost the same as the regular time machine, except that it will sometimes resume time travel.

Global travel will always resume from when the previous global traveled example ended. E.g.

# GLOBAL_TIME_TRAVEL_TIME=2014-11-15 bundle exec rspec some_spec.rb

it "example 1" do
  Time.now # => 2014-11-15 00:00:00
  sleep 6
end

it "example 2" do
  Time.now # => 2014-11-15 00:00:06 (resumed from end of previous example)
end

Following local travel will resume when specified time is the same as the previous examples specified time. If the time is different, it will start from the current examples specified time.

describe SomeUnit, travel: Time.new(2014, 11, 15) do
  it "example 1" do
    Time.now # => 2014-11-15 00:00:00
    sleep 6
  end

  it "example 2" do
    Time.now # => 2014-11-15 00:00:06 (resumed from end of previous example)
  end

  it "example 3", travel: Time.new(1982, 6, 16) do
    Time.now # => 1982-06-16 00:00:00
  end
end

🔧 Basic Usage

Local Time Travel

Timecop.travel/freeze any RSpec (describe|context|example) with :travel or :freeze metadata.

# Timecop.travel
it "some description", travel: Time.new(2014, 11, 15) do
  Time.now # 2014-11-15 00:00:00
  sleep 6
  Time.now # 2014-11-15 00:00:06 (6 seconds later)
end

# Timecop.freeze
it "some description", freeze: Time.new(2014, 11, 15) do
  Time.now # 2014-11-15 00:00:00
  sleep 6
  Time.now # 2014-11-15 00:00:00 (Ruby's time hasn't advanced)
end

Global Time Travel

Using global time travel will Timecop.travel any example that isn’t already time traveling. I.e. example level timecop metadata will take precedence.

GLOBAL_TIME_TRAVEL_TIME=2014-11-15 bundle exec rspec spec/some_directory/

The global time travel can also be skipped. You may want to skip time travel when testing with some external service, such as redis, where you can’t modify time the same way as within ruby.

it "some example that can't time travel", :skip_global_travel do
  # Time.now will be real time
end

🦷 FLOSS Funding

While galtzo-floss tools are free software and will always be, the project would benefit immensely from some funding. Raising a monthly budget of… “dollars” would make the project more sustainable.

We welcome both individual and corporate sponsors! We also offer a wide array of funding channels to account for your preferences. Currently, Open Collective is our preferred funding platform.

If you’re working in a company that’s making significant use of galtzo-floss tools we’d appreciate it if you suggest to your company to become a galtzo-floss sponsor.

You can support the development of galtzo-floss tools via GitHub Sponsors, Liberapay, PayPal, Open Collective and Tidelift.

📍 NOTE
If doing a sponsorship in the form of donation is problematic for your company from an accounting standpoint, we’d recommend the use of Tidelift, where you can get a support-like subscription instead.

Open Collective for Individuals

Support us with a monthly donation and help us continue our activities. [Become a backer]

NOTE: kettle-readme-backers updates this list every day, automatically.

No backers yet. Be the first!

Open Collective for Organizations

Become a sponsor and get your logo on our README on GitHub with a link to your site. [Become a sponsor]

NOTE: kettle-readme-backers updates this list every day, automatically.

No sponsors yet. Be the first!

Another way to support open-source

I’m driven by a passion to foster a thriving open-source community – a space where people can tackle complex problems, no matter how small. Revitalizing libraries that have fallen into disrepair, and building new libraries focused on solving real-world challenges, are my passions. I was recently affected by layoffs, and the tech jobs market is unwelcoming. I’m reaching out here because your support would significantly aid my efforts to provide for my family, and my farm (11 🐔 chickens, 2 🐶 dogs, 3 🐰 rabbits, 8 🐈‍ cats).

If you work at a company that uses my work, please encourage them to support me as a corporate sponsor. My work on gems you use might show up in bundle fund.

I’m developing a new library, floss_funding, designed to empower open-source developers like myself to get paid for the work we do, in a sustainable way. Please give it a look.

Floss-Funding.dev: 👉️ No network calls. 👉️ No tracking. 👉️ No oversight. 👉️ Minimal crypto hashing. 💡 Easily disabled nags

🔐 Security

See SECURITY.md.

🤝 Contributing

If you need some ideas of where to help, you could work on adding more code coverage, check issues or PRs, or use the gem and think about how it could be better.

We so if you make changes, remember to update it.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for more detailed instructions.

🚀 Release Instructions

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Code Coverage

Coverage service badges

🪇 Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting with this project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists agrees to follow the .

🌈 Contributors

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Also see GitLab Contributors: https://gitlab.com/galtzo-floss/timecop-rspec/-/graphs/main

📌 Versioning

This library follows for its public API where practical. For most applications, prefer the Pessimistic Version Constraint with two digits of precision.

For example:

spec.add_dependency("timecop-rspec", "~> 1.0")

📌 Is "Platform Support" part of the public API? More details inside.

Dropping support for a platform can be a breaking change for affected users. If a release changes supported platforms, it should be called out clearly in the changelog and versioned with that impact in mind.

To get a better understanding of how SemVer is intended to work over a project’s lifetime, read this article from the creator of SemVer:

“Major Version Numbers are Not Sacred”

See CHANGELOG.md for a list of releases.

📄 License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT .

© Copyright

See LICENSE.md for the official copyright notice.

🤑 A request for help

Maintainers have teeth and need to pay their dentists. After getting laid off in an RIF in March, and encountering difficulty finding a new one, I began spending most of my time building open source tools. I’m hoping to be able to pay for my kids’ health insurance this month, so if you value the work I am doing, I need your support. Please consider sponsoring me or the project.

To join the community or get help, use the RubyForum or Discord.

To say “thanks!” ☝️ Join the community or 👇️ send money.

💌 💌 💌

Please give the project a star ⭐ ♥.

Many parts of this project are actively managed by a kettle-jem smart template utilizing StructuredMerge.org merge contracts.

Thanks for RTFM. ☺️

| Field | Value | |—|—| | Package | timecop-rspec | | Description | ⌚️ Timecop::Rspec provides Timecop time-machines for RSpec that allow youto time-travel test examples, context/describes, and/or your entire test suite. Find out how your code will behave… in the future! Fund overlooked open source projects - bottom of stack, dev/test dependencies: floss-funding.dev | | Homepage | https://github.com/galtzo-floss/timecop-rspec | | Source | https://github.com/galtzo-floss/timecop-rspec | | License | MIT | | Funding | https://github.com/sponsors/pboling, https://ko-fi.com/pboling, https://liberapay.com/pboling/donate, https://opencollective.com/galtzo-floss, https://thanks.dev/u/gh/pboling, https://tidelift.com/funding/github/rubygems/timecop-rspec, https://www.buymeacoffee.com/pboling |

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