I was having troubles with autotest, and not really finding a good solution. But i noticed that inside rspec2 they were using watchr. Watchr is a very generic gem that will allow you to watch a set of files and take action when something changes. That sounds great, but maybe a bit too general :) So, it appears you need a script to run your rspec2 continuously using watchr. Luckily i did find some examples, which allowed my to brew my own (save in your rails-root as specs.watchr): [ruby wraplines="false"] # adapted from http://github.com/rspec/rspec-rails/blob/master/specs.watchr # Run me with: # # $ watchr specs.watchr # -------------------------------------------------- # Convenience Methods # -------------------------------------------------- def all_spec_files Dir['spec/**/*_spec.rb'] end def run_spec_matching(thing_to_match) matches = all_spec_files.grep(/#{thing_to_match}/i) if matches.empty? puts "Sorry, thanks for playing, but there were no matches for #{thing_to_match}" else run matches.join(' ') end end def run(files_to_run) puts("Running: #{files_to_run}") system("rspec -c #{files_to_run}") no_int_for_you end def run_all_specs run(all_spec_files.join(' ')) end # -------------------------------------------------- # Watchr Rules # -------------------------------------------------- watch('^spec/(.*)_spec.rb') { |m| run_spec_matching(m[1]) } watch('^app/(.*).rb') { |m| run_spec_matching(m[1]) } watch('^app/(.*).haml') { |m| run_spec_matching(m[1]) } watch('^lib/(.*).rb') { |m| run_spec_matching(m[1]) } watch('^spec/spec_helper.rb') { run_all_specs } watch('^spec/support/.*.rb') { run_all_specs } # -------------------------------------------------- # Signal Handling # -------------------------------------------------- def no_int_for_you @sent_an_int = nil end Signal.trap 'INT' do if @sent_an_int then puts " A second INT? Ok, I get the message. Shutting down now." exit else puts " Did you just send me an INT? Ugh. I'll quit for real if you do it again." @sent_an_int = true Kernel.sleep 1.5 run_all_specs end end [/ruby] It even seems to be quicker than autotest, but not sure if that is just wishful thinking.