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codegram
spinach
Ruby2013–2015
codegram / spinach

spinach

Spinach is a BDD framework on top of Gherkin.

Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
3Distinct people
3Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
577GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Spinach is a BDD framework on top of Gherkin.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 11:56:56 AM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by month3 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2013-09-19 15:50:45 UTC to 2015-09-09 14:24:58 UTC.

0122013-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 commentsSep 20132013-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2013-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2013-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2014-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2014-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2014-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2014-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2014-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2014-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2014-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2014-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 commentsSep 20142014-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2014-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2014-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2015-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2015-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2015-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2015-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2015-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2015-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2015-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2015-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsSep 2015

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
Sep 20132013-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-10-01 00:00:00 UTC202
Oct 20132013-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-11-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Nov 20132013-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20132013-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jan 20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-02-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Feb 20142014-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-03-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Mar 20142014-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20142014-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-05-01 00:00:00 UTC000
May 20142014-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-06-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jun 20142014-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20142014-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20142014-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-09-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Sep 20142014-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20142014-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-11-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Nov 20142014-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20142014-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jan 20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-02-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Feb 20152015-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-03-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Mar 20152015-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20152015-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-05-01 00:00:00 UTC000
May 20152015-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-06-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jun 20152015-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20152015-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20152015-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-09-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Sep 20152015-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-10-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

3 sources
dankohn1·Sep 9, 2015
The biggest gain of Cucumber I have seen is executable specifications. That is, every development task is described somewhere, whether it's pages and pages of a Google Doc or a couple lines in a Github issue. Code then gets implemented, and is almost certainly iterated over time. The question is, does the specification ever get updated to match the code's behavior? With Cucumber, you have a relatively clear specification (written in Gherkin's Given-When-Then syntax), and it always remains up-to-date because the developer needs to update it as corner cases or new scenarios arise. (Of course, this assumes you are running continuous integration with something like CircleCI and tracking code coverage with something like Coveralls.io.) I don't think there's anything magic about Cucumber, vs. Turnip <https://github.com/jnicklas/turnip>, or Spin
Read the rest
ach <https://github.com/codegram/spinach>, or even Steak <https://github.com/cavalle/steak>. But I do think the Gherkin syntax encourages use of clear descriptions that make it easier for a new developer (or yourself, 6 months later) to understand what a feature is supposed to do, and in particular, to avoid accidentally breaking it as you make other changes.
In Saving Agile with BDD and Cucumber
1qaz2wsx3edc·Sep 19, 2013
I believe this is because people don't properly consider who cucumber is for (business analyst), it was developed with a specific use case in mind. Aside from that, writing steps is ugly. I've only suggest cucumber is extreme cases, and even then with caution, and not before mentioning Spinach as an alternative. https://github.com/codegram/spinach Spinach operates with plain old ruby objects. They fix the two weakness of cucumber: Step maintainability & Step reusability. That said, I seldomly use either, because I can easily write the same under one house with RSpec.
In A Case Against Cucumber
ollysb·Sep 19, 2013
I'm a huge fan of the gherkin format, it let's me sketch out a feature and then work through it methodically, testing as I go. But cucumber has a critical flaw, it forces you to think about code while you're writing. Because step definitions are global you can't just write any old thing, you might fire off a step you wrote previously. This is only a side issue though, compared to the biggest problem, step reuse. Given a person "fred" exists And a person "ethel" exists And a fatherhood exists with parent: person "fred", child: person "ethel" Did someone mention cucumber steps are written in english? What happened to: Given Ethel has a father called Fred I moved over to Spinach[1] about 18 months ago and I've been much happier. Steps are specific to a feature so I can go to town with shakespearean english. Reuse isn't an i
Read the rest
ssue either, it just happens in the step definitions, not in the gherkin files. Using more natural english tends to lead to fewer larger steps anyway, so it feels a lot less like call-by-regex. [1] https://github.com/codegram/spinach
In A Case Against Cucumber

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