RSpec (Manual Uploads)

You can automatically detect and manage flaky tests in your projects running RSpec by integrating with Trunk. This document explains how to configure RSpec to output JUnit XML reports that can be uploaded to Trunk for analysis.

We highly recommend using Trunk’s RSpec plugin to upload test results for the best accuracy when detecting flaky tests.

Setup steps

Work through the steps below in order. Once you’ve finished the last one, you’ll be ready to move on to configure uploads in CI.

Generate a compatible test report

Configure the report file path or glob

Disable retries for better detection accuracy

Test uploads locally

Generating Reports

Trunk detects flaky tests by analyzing test results automatically uploaded from your CI jobs. You can do this for your Rspec tests by generating JUnit XML reports from your test runs. To generate Trunk-compatible reports, install the rspec_junit_formatter:

gem install rspec_junit_formatter

You can use rspec_junit_formatter like this:

rspec --format RspecJunitFormatter --out junit.xml

Report File Path

The JUnit report will be written to the location specified by the --out argument. In the example above, the report would be at ./junit.xml. You will need this when you update your CI config to integrate with Trunk.

Disable Retries

You need to disable automatic retries if you previously enabled them. Retries compromise the accurate detection of flaky tests. If you have a step in CI to rerun failed tests with the --only-failures option, or you’re using a package like rspec-retry, remember to disable them.

Try It Locally

The Validate Command

You can validate your test reports using the Trunk Analytics CLI. If you don’t have it installed already, you can install and run the validate command like this:

SKU="trunk-analytics-cli-x86_64-unknown-linux.tar.gz"
curl -fL --retry 3 \
  "https://github.com/trunk-io/analytics-cli/releases/latest/download/${SKU}" \
  | tar -xz

chmod +x trunk-analytics-cli
./trunk-analytics-cli validate --junit-paths "./junit.xml"

This will not upload anything to Trunk. To improve detection accuracy, you should address all errors and warnings before proceeding to the next steps.

Test Upload

Before modifying your CI jobs to automatically upload test results to Trunk, try uploading a single test run manually. You make an upload to Trunk using the following command:

./trunk-analytics-cli upload --junit-paths "./junit.xml" \
    --org-url-slug <TRUNK_ORG_SLUG> \
    --token <TRUNK_ORG_TOKEN>

You can find your Trunk organization slug and token in the settings or by following these instructions. After your upload, you can verify that Trunk has received and processed it successfully in the Uploads tab. Warnings will be displayed if the report has issues.