rst is a requirements tracking tool made for developers and stands for "Requirements, Specifications and Tests". rst is pronounced "wrist"
Once installed call rst -h and see the help message. rst tutorial will start the
interactive tutorial.
Requirements and design-documentation are probably the most important components of writing quality software. Without them it can be very difficult to develop and maintain the product you were aiming to create. However, there are no open source tools (or proprietary tools for that matter) that make this process simple, easy and fun. rst aims to do that by giving you a:
It is hard to keep documentation up to date, especially when it doesn't aid the core developer in tracking their progress. rst aims to bridge that gap, giving you a simple tool that you can use to track your project completeness and test coverage.
If you like or use rst please star:star: it on github and mention it to friends and colleagues. It is my belief that requirements tracking needs to be as second nature for developers as revision control and unit testing has become. I hope that by building better software we can all make the world just a little bit better.
If you find bugs or have any suggestions, please open an issue here: bug tracker
rst is still in Beta and is not 100% feature complete. The API for the cmdline and text format is expected to be stable, but the author reserves the right to change anything that needs to be changed if it improves usability.
Future improvements include: - Additional command line tools - status: analyze artifacts and display any errors and a summary - export: export artifacts to json, csv, html and other formats - tests: cmd for viewing and querying executed tests in relationship to defined tests (see Test Tracking) - Test Tracking: REST API with DB backend for tracking test execution (rst currently only supports tracking implementaiton, not execution) - Web UI frontend to make it easy for non-devs to view requirements
There are currently two installation options: downloading a cross-linux binary or installing through Cargo.
All we will be doing is downloading this file,
chmod a+x it, and putting it in a directory on your $PATH
If you know what all this means, just do that.
OR follow these directions
Run this in the terminal to download the rst binary into ~/bin:
mkdir -p ~/bin && wget -q https://github.com/vitiral/rst/raw/master/target/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/release/rst -O ~/bin/rst && chmod a+x ~/bin/rst
Now add ~/bin to your $PATH in .bashrc. With a text editor, copy/paste this to the end:
export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
Now run source ~/.bashrc. You should now be able to run rst -h from anywhere. Update rst
by simply re-running the first line.
Note: neither windows or mac are tested. If you try either, whether it works or not, please open an issue to let us know!
If you have rust and cargo installed (recommendation: install them with
rustup), simply execute:
cargo install rst
and follow any directions it tells you to.
For a full tutorial, install rst and run
rst tutorial
If I was writing a "hello world" program in python and wanted to track requirements, this would be the process.
mkdir and cdto an empty folderrst initvim reqs/design.rst and write my requirements and design
```
[REQ-purpose] text = ''' we need to be able to say hello to both the world and aliens '''
[REQ-world] partof = "REQ-purpose" text = ''' there shall be way to say hello to the world. All of it. '''
[SPC-world] text = ''' The hello-world function shall say hello by printing it on the cmdline '''
[TST-world] text = ''' To make this testable, there will be an intermediary function that can test it before printing. '''
[REQ-aliens] partof = "REQ-purpose" text = ''' there shall also be a way to say hello to aliens, but that will be harder '''
[SPC-aliens]
text = '''
I think we should use SETI or something
'''
- `mkdir src`
- `vim src/hello.py` and write my program
def helloworld(): ''' an intermediary function to allow for testing ''' return "hello world!"
def testgreeting(): ''' partof: #TST-world ''' assert _helloworld() == "hello world!"
def helloworld(): ''' partof: #SPC-world ''' print _helloworld()
if name == 'main':
testgreeting()
helloworld()
As you can see, we've finished our specs and tests for saying hello to the world,
but not to the aliens. It would be good to know if you had finished the second part
when the aliens arrive and rst can help you do that! Here is a snapshot (0.1.0) of items yet to be started:
If you want to see items that have been mostly complete but have not been tested,
clone this repo and run:
- `python2 src/hello.py`: it says hello world! That is good design :)
- `vim ~/.rst/settings.rst` and add `"{repo}/src"` to `code_paths`
- `rst ls -L` to show this lovely status report (run on your own computer for color):
|--| 50% 50% | REQ
|--| 0% 0% | REQ-aliens
|--| 50% 50% | REQ-purpose
|DT| 100% 100% | REQ-world
|--| 50% 50% | SPC
|--| 0% 0% | SPC-aliens
|DT| 100% 100% | SPC-world | Future development
$ rst ls -c '<' -T
status command gives the user information on any errors that exist in the project artifacts such as:
rst ls -c '>50' -t '<99' -T