Make audible Ding! sound, or growl notification, when `rake test` finishes!

Question

I lose a ton of productivity by getting distracted while waiting for my tests to run.

Usually, I'll start to look at something while they're loading --- and 15-20 minutes later I realize my tests are long done, and I've spent 10 minutes reading online.

Make a small change... rerun tests ... another 10-15 minutes wasted!

How can I make my computer make some kind of alert (Sound or growl notification) when my tests finish, so I can snap back to what I was doing??

Answer 1

While I haven't tried this, a quick Google search brought up growlnotify, which will send growl notifications from the command line.

From there, it's just something like this:

$ rake test ; growlnotify "done"

Your syntax may vary.

Answer 2

You have.a good idea to a real issue, with the notifications, and @tylerl suggestion is good.

I would like to recommend a parallel approach: try as much as possible not to lose your focus (reading blogs, surfing around...) during the tests. During the (I assume, few) minutes that they take up, try not to "get distracted". Productivity is lost more on the context switching, pulling out of the mindset and getting back into it, than simply by the clock moving on.

It is not easy and it depends also on how and how long your test take.

I try, not always succeeding, to continue working, even simply thinking about the results and trying to anticipate and analyze them in my mind, or thinking about alternative solutions...

In this way you should (could?) Be able to remain productive while coding, and you can devote a more structured time to blogs, updating your skills, asking and answering questions here :) or relaxing in general.