When to launch application server during a cucumber test

Question

I am currently setting a testing environment and I want to for now run my automated tests locally (I'll run then on a CI server in the near future).

I have written a script which goes into the appropriate directory and runs activator run (this is a play framework project). This is what I've included in my hooks.rb file.

AfterConfiguration do
    exec 'sh activate_ui.sh'
end 

However, when I run my cucumber test(with ruby, no rails), the server launches and since it needs to continuously run and so, my cucumber tests never start.

How can I get around this? Is there a suggested practice?

Answer 1

I used osascript to open a new Terminal and run the script so it would not interfere with my cucumber test.

osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to do script "sh path/to/activate_ui.sh"'