Just released an update to cucumber_characteristics supporting cucumber 2.1+ and newer ruby versions (1.9+). cucumber_characteristics allows you to fully profile your cucumber test runs enabling you to understand exactly where your test time is going. This is a formatter and should drop into your existing setup transparently generating a html and/or json reports.

For each step execution the following is reported

• Location of definition & regex
• Step usage location and number of times executed (background/outline etc)
• Counts for success/failure/pending/etc
• Total time taken in test run along with average, fastest, slowest times per step

For each feature the following is reported

• Location and time taken to run feature
• Result and number of steps run
• Breakdown of feature by individual example run if a Scenario Outline.

There is also added support to list out all unused steps in a cucumber test run to aid step curation. Be aware if you are only running a specific test set, for example via a TAG as you will get a larger number of unused steps than are not ‘true’ unused steps.

Enjoy!