The real beauty of RSpec for unit testing is that it allows you to create subclasses of your TestFixture class that specialize the scenario you’re testing for.

I think this is possible with the xUnit frameworks, but it’s not easy. It’s a pattern I tried a few times with NUnit and felt pretty good, in some cases at least.

So for example in RSpec when you do this…

describe “a user”
before(:each) do
@user = TestFactory.create(:user)
end
describe “who is view direct” do
before(:each) do
@user.status = :view_direct
end

it “should immediately get access to previews” do
…
end
end

describe “who is view by request” do
end
end

…what you’re actually doing is creating a hierarchy of test classes on the fly, because #describe is a factory method for test cases.

I imagine you could replicate something like this C#, but it might be quite cumbersome to change.