Silence RSpec specs

spec_helper.rb

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.before(:all, &:silence_output)
  config.after(:all, &:enable_output)
end

# Redirects stderr and stdout to /dev/null.
def silence_output
  @orig_stderr = $stderr
  @orig_stdout = $stdout

  # redirect stderr and stdout to /dev/null
  $stderr = File.new('/dev/null', 'w')
  $stdout = File.new('/dev/null', 'w')
end

# Replace stdout and stderr so anything else is output correctly.
def enable_output
  $stderr = @orig_stderr
  $stdout = @orig_stdout
  @orig_stderr = nil
  @orig_stdout = nil
end

This gist helped me a lot and saved a lot of time :) Thank you Adam !

Credit where it's due - this is adapted from http://benevolentcode.com/2011/03/temporarily-redirect-stdout-in-ruby/. Glad you found it useful!

Thanks for the gist!

I am getting some errors regarding "private method `silence_output' called for #RSpec::Core::ExampleGroup::Nested_1:0x007f7f8aa89b00". Fixed by changing to the following:

config.before(:all) { silence_output }
config.after(:all) { enable_output }

I encountered the same errors as @jimjh when using this gist and can confirm the fix works with Rails 3.2.8 & Rspec 2.12.0, thanks!

Also can use Kernel.silence_stream:

silence_stream(STDOUT) do
 ...
end

Great post. I modified silence_output to redirect the output to files instead of the void. Works out great.

def silence_output
  @orig_stderr = $stderr
  @orig_stdout = $stdout

  # redirect stderr and stdout to /dev/null
  $stderr = File.new('./spec/stdout.txt', 'w')
  $stdout = File.new('./spec/stderr.txt', 'w')
end

Hi guys, above mentioned methods doesn't help me in redirecting stdout for system call (` method). But thanks you all, these examples helped me in identifying the workaround. Here is the workaround I have used.

config.before :each do
    original_system_call_method = GitUtils.method(:`)
    allow(GitUtils).to receive(:`) do |arg|
      Kernel.silence_stream(STDERR) do
        original_system_call_method.call(arg)
      end
    end
  end

# GitUtils is my class where I have multiple utility methods which usage backtick(`) to run shell commands

Any way to still use a debugger?

this also works:

bin/rspec spec/models/user_spec.rb 2>/dev/null