Simplify the default, generated Cucumber config

[freesteph]

🤔 What's the problem you're trying to solve?

I find the default config generated by cucumber-rails very terse and hard to understand:

<%
rerun = File.file?('rerun.txt') ? IO.read('rerun.txt') : ""
rerun = rerun.strip.gsub /\s/, ' '
rerun_opts = rerun.empty? ? "--format #{ENV['CUCUMBER_FORMAT'] || 'progress'} features" : "--format #{ENV['CUCUMBER_FORMAT'] || 'pretty'} #{rerun}"
std_opts = "--format #{ENV['CUCUMBER_FORMAT'] || 'pretty'} --strict --tags 'not @wip'"
%>
default: <%= std_opts %> features
wip: --tags @wip:3 --wip features
rerun: <%= rerun_opts %> --format rerun --out rerun.txt --strict --tags 'not @wip'

✨ What's your proposed solution?

I think having a simpler YAML would benefit the majority of users, and the few that need more complex configs will easily figure it out. Here's a naive proposal:

<%# You can also use ERB in this file %>
default:
  - --publish-quiet
  - --strict
  - --color

wip:
  - --profile=default
  - --tags=@wip

We lose the re-run logic but I think that should probably be part of cucumber-ruby, rather than a serious amount of logic living in the config.

We also lose the CUCUMBER_FORMAT format logic, but I'm not sure how useful that is? It can be reintroduced with:

<%# You can also use ERB in this file %>
default:
  - --publish-quiet
  - --strict
  - --color
  - --format=<%= ENV['CUCUMBER_FORMAT'] || 'pretty' %>

wip:
  - --profile=default
  - --tags=@wip

and I guess it demonstrates using ERB better than the toplevel comment? I don't mind either.

⛏ Have you considered any alternatives or workarounds?

I have browsed around to see what people did with their config and found cucumber/cucumber-ruby#1651 which showcased the simplicity I was after, notably profile inheritance.

Thank you for your consideration. I'll happily write the PR if needed.

[luke-hill]

Whilst you are right, there is a secondary issue to consider....

Which is for a while (I believe not on github), we've advocated from trying to move away from cucumber.yml to something more ruby like. Ideally a standardised .rb file. The primary reason is the .yml file has a "faux" erb templating parse mechanism, which isn't understood by IDEs (It throws errors up the wazoo), and also isn't particularly well documented. It is also unique to cucumber-ruby.

If you're willing to do some minor tweaks to it, then I would gladly welcome it / review it. Currently my plan is to get a version9 cut in the coming weeks, and then I've got at least half a dozen refactor PR's. Predominantly to do with the dependencies to get out. This should see some form of patch/minor influx of releases to get caught up.

Until the above is done, I wouldn't be willing to look at this personally.

Hope that helps / gives some more clarity.

NB: Be careful of using "some" YML standards in the cucumber.yml file. They will potentially fail. Again as mentioned, it's sort of half-yml half-erb