I switched from Cucumber to Steak for several months and loved it. Getting away from english specification was a BIG win.
However, two weeks ago, I removed Steak entirely, and am now using pure RSpec for my integration tests.
If you look at the heart of Steak [1] you'll see it's nothing more than a couple aliases for existing RSpec methods. 'example' becomes 'scenario', and 'before' becomes 'background'. I'm all for accurate language, but I don't think switching a couple method names really changes anything important here.
Switching from Steak to pure RSpec was simply a matter of a global search and replace, and now I've got one less gem to think about.
I went one step further and ditched RSpec for straight Test::Unit and sometimes Shoulda. I don't find the RSpec DSL an improvement over straight Ruby asserts at all.
I also use Steak in my everyday job and I think Steak is more an idea than a library. The idea of doing acceptance testing without extra layers such as Cucumber, and some little convenience tools for the job (those aliases you refer, a couple generators and rake tasks, and a common reference for the community on how to do it). I remember @cavalle pointing in Twitter something like "Steak is a gem but it could be a gist".
So using this definition, you're still kind of using Steak =;-) (and actually is what made you do that step).
I think it provides that value, but you can cook it on your own because as you point is not difficult at all.
However, two weeks ago, I removed Steak entirely, and am now using pure RSpec for my integration tests.
If you look at the heart of Steak [1] you'll see it's nothing more than a couple aliases for existing RSpec methods. 'example' becomes 'scenario', and 'before' becomes 'background'. I'm all for accurate language, but I don't think switching a couple method names really changes anything important here.
Switching from Steak to pure RSpec was simply a matter of a global search and replace, and now I've got one less gem to think about.
[1] https://github.com/cavalle/steak/blob/master/lib/rspec-2/ste...