I want to start contributing to Rails, fixing patches, submitting my own code etc, and the Rails guide states that the tests MUST run. However, they're currently not and I'm not quite sure what to do.
I'm running Mac OS X, Ruby 1.8 and I have all the needed gems installed - what can I do?
The best place to look is the Rails continuous integration server, which will tell you if there are any currently failing tests. It looks like the most recent edge Rails build failed, and if you checked out the code at any time between August 8th and 16th, you probably got a build with a few failures.
The failing CI tests were due to errors with SQLite2 (now removed from master) and Postgres. We fixed these, but none of these run from a normal rake test so your problems probably aren't related.
Make sure you have the latest Mocha gem installed and that you follow the directions provided by Mike Gunderloy on his afreshcup.com blog: http://afreshcup.com/2008/10/27/contributing-to-rails-step-by-step/