RSpec before blocks not being called before contexts or describes - ruby

Question

Given the following code:
RSpec.configure do |config|
config.before(:all) { puts 'before all' }
config.before(:suite) { puts 'before suite'}
config.before(:context) { puts 'before context'}
config.before(:each) { puts 'before each'}
end
RSpec.describe "SomeClass" do
it 'matches some regex' do
puts 'in first it block'
expect('some string').to match(/.*/)
end
describe 'some group of tests' do
puts 'in some group'
context 'when some thing happens' do
puts 'in context'
it 'does something' do
expect(true).to be_truthy
end
end
end
end
I would expect the following output:
before suite
before all
before context
before each
in some group
in context
in first it block
.before each
But instead I get:
in some group
in context
before suite
before all
before context
before each
in first it block
.before each
Meaning that context or describe gets run before any before configuration I've set up.
I expect it to be the first output because of what I've read here and here.
What do I do when I absolutely need code to run before absolutely anything else in the test files? Including (nested) context or describes? And why doesn't it work the way I expect?
Note: I see the same behavior when I include the before :something statements within the scope of the uppermost describe.
(This question is similar to this question, but not the same. I would like to know why my tests are running this way and what the proper RSpec convention is to run a piece of code before absolutely anything else.)
Version info:
RSpec 3.6
- rspec-core 3.6.0
- rspec-expectations 3.6.0
- rspec-mocks 3.6.0
- rspec-support 3.6.0
UPDATE:
It may be helpful to know some context: I'm writing selenium front end automated tests using the selenium-webdriver gem. Before any and all it blocks run, I need to call a function called navigate() (in order to take me to the web page I'm writing the tests for, this function takes about 30 seconds to run because it takes me through two login pages before it gets to where it needs to go) to be called and complete before anything else happens. In my RSpec file I'm using before blocks in an attempt to make this happen, however rspec keeps running tests before the before blocks, and failing.

Answer 1

If you were to put puts "in some group" and puts "in context" into before(:all) blocks, then the output is closer to what you're expecting.
RSpec.configure do |config|
config.before(:all) { puts 'before all' }
config.before(:suite) { puts 'before suite'}
config.before(:context) { puts 'before context'}
config.before(:each) { puts 'before each'}
end
RSpec.describe "SomeClass" do
it 'matches some regex' do
puts 'in first it block'
expect('some string').to match(/.*/)
end
describe 'some group of tests' do
before(:all) { puts 'in some group' }
context 'when some thing happens' do
before(:all) { puts 'in context' }
it 'does something' do
expect(true).to be_truthy
end
end
end
end
outputs
before suite
before all
before context
before each
in first it block
.in some group
in context
before each
.
or, if you did before(:each) you would get
before suite
before all
before context
before each
in first it block
.before each
in some group
in context
.
The reason for the current output is your puts statements for "in some group" and "in context" are being executed when the file is being parsed, not waiting for RSpec at all. If we gave a different example, without Rspec in the mix, imagine we had a file with just
class SomeClass
puts "in class"
def do_something
puts "doing something"
end
end
if we load that file into an irb session or run it on the command line with ruby, we would see "in class" output in the console even though we haven't done anything with that class.