It is not a standardized specification like the ISO one, and does not aim to become one.
Instead, it is a practical tool to describe and test the behavior of Ruby with code.
Every example code has a textual description, which presents several advantages:
* It is easier to understand the intent of the author
* It documents how recent versions of Ruby should behave
* It helps Ruby implementations to agree on a common behavior
The specs are written with syntax similar to RSpec 2.
They are run with MSpec, the purpose-built framework for running the Ruby Spec Suite.
For more information, see the [MSpec](http://github.com/ruby/mspec) project.
The specs describe the [language syntax](language/), the [core library](core/), the [standard library](library/), the [C API for extensions](optional/capi) and the [command line flags](command_line/).
The language specs are grouped by keyword while the core and standard library specs are grouped by class and method.
ruby/spec is known to be tested in these implementations for every commit:
* [MRI](http://rubyci.org/) on 30 platforms and 4 versions
ruby/spec describes the behavior of Ruby 2.4 and more recent Ruby versions.
More precisely, every latest stable MRI release should [pass](https://travis-ci.org/ruby/spec) all specs of ruby/spec (2.4.x, 2.5.x, 2.6.x, etc), and those are tested in TravisCI.
For *testing* a Ruby implementation, one should always test against the implementation's copy of the specs under `spec/ruby`, as that's what the Ruby implementation tests against in their CI.
Also, this repository doesn't always contain the latest spec changes from MRI (it's synchronized monthly), and does not contain tags (specs marked as failing on that Ruby implementation).
Running specs in a Ruby implementation can be done with:
```
$ cd ruby_implementation/spec/ruby
# Add ../ruby_implementation/bin in PATH, or pass -t /path/to/bin/ruby
See [CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/ruby/spec/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md) for documentation about contributing and writing specs (guards, matchers, etc).
These specs were later extracted to their own project, RubySpec, with a specific vision and principles.
At the end of 2014, Brian Shirai, the creator of RubySpec, decided to [end RubySpec](http://rubinius.com/2014/12/31/matz-s-ruby-developers-don-t-use-rubyspec/).
A couple months later, the different repositories were merged and [the project was revived](http://eregon.github.io/rubyspec/2015/07/29/rubyspec-is-reborn.html).
On 12 January 2016, the name was changed to "The Ruby Spec Suite" for clarity and to let the RubySpec ideology rest in peace.