Jasmine was born Thanksgiving week 2008. Pivotal Labs needed a JavaScript testing framework that didn’t depend on DOM and the request/response cycle. Other solutions were lacking. So it was time to write yet another JavaScript testing framework.
Exhausted from cooking for a day-and-a-half, I sat at my dining room table and started over. I started with a single test file and a single test assertion function. Then I test-drove for a few hours to see how far I could get. It was fairly easy – granted I knew what we needed and Rajan and I had spent a lot of time using and spelunking inside other test frameworks.
But what to name this project? We all know how important it is to name a thing.
My backyard is full of Jasmine. The previous owners planted it across the back of my house and it is very happy there. Whenever I looked up from my laptop during those coding sessions it’s what I saw first. And it hit me early: JavaScript Minimal Testing – JS Minimal Test – JS Min Test – Jasmine.
Jasmine.
That’ll work.
The code was standing on its own by the end of the weekend. A few more days pairing with Rajan and we had enough functionality to use Jasmine on a client project. A few more months with a lot of Pivots rounding out functionality and Jasmine was ready for your project.
Jasmine just turned 5 years old a few weeks ago. And as a belated birthday present to the community we’re thrilled to release Jasmine 2.0 (core and gem).
