Technical
Autotest Related

To run autotest with svn checking

autotest -vcs=svn -vcstime=5 -v

or you could use a custom script

$v = true      #||= false
$rails = true   # ||= false
$vcs = 'svn'     #||= nil
$vcstime = 5  #||= 300
$vcstime = $vcstime.to_i

require 'rubygems'
require 'rails_autotest'

class LocalAutotest < RailsAutotest

  def initialize # :nodoc:
   super
   @exceptions =  %r%^\./(?:db|doc|index|log|public|script|vendor/rails)%
   puts "Running autotest locally with exceptions" 
 end
end

LocalAutotest.run

Also see Testing Rails Plugins With Auto Test

Autotest with Growl

As everyone out there I’ve customized (rewrote a bit ) other people’s approach to butification of Autotest:Growl
this is how it looks in my case.

require 'autotest/redgreen'

module Autotest::Growl
  def self.growl title, msg, img, pri=0, stick="" 
    system "growlnotify -n autotest --image #{img} -p #{pri} -m #{msg.inspect} #{title} #{stick}" 
  end

  Autotest.add_hook :run do |at|
    growl "Started", "Autotest Running","~/.rails_ok.png" 
  end

  Autotest.add_hook :ran_command do |at|
    output  = at.results.last.strip

    if output =~ /[1-9] failures?/ or output =~ /[1-9] errors?/
      growl "Test Results", "#{output}", '~/.rails_fail.png', 2 #, "-s" 
    else
      growl "Test Results", "#{output}", '~/.rails_ok.png'
    end
  end
end

Here you will find nice green and red images.

And some cool dude even have autotest with sound
Sexier looking growl notifications with batter RegEx for errors detection.