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Setting the fail_if_no_examples option

Use the fail_if_no_examples option to make RSpec exit with a failure status (by default 1) if there are no examples. Using this option, it is recommended to add a --require spec_helper option to .rspec file to ensure the fail_if_no_examples option is set even if no spec files are loaded.

This option may be particularly useful when you happen to not run RSpec tests locally, but rely on CI to do this. This prevents from false positive builds, when you expected some RSpec examples to be run, but none were run. Such a situation may be caused by your misconfiguration or regression/major changes in RSpec.

Background​

Given a file named "spec/spec_helper.rb" with:

RSpec.configure { |c| c.fail_if_no_examples = true }

Given a file named ".rspec" with:

--require spec_helper

Given a file named "spec/some.spec.rb" with:

RSpec.describe 'something' do
  it 'succeeds' do
    true
  end
end

Examples file name is not matched by RSpec pattern, thus there are no examples run​

When I run rspec

Then it should fail with "0 examples, 0 failures".

Examples file name is matched by RSpec pattern, 1 example is run​

When I run rspec --pattern spec/**/*.spec.rb

Then it should pass with "1 example, 0 failures".