Unit testing controller triggering custom directive

Question

Suppose you have an angular+jasmine app and your controller looks something like this:

app.controller('MyController', function($scope) {
   $scope.myFunc = function() {
   $scope.myArray = [];
       // after some operations here
       myArray.push(new_obj);
   }
   $scope.someOtherArray = [];
}

Additionally, I have a custom directive that is triggered by every element in myArray. Something like this:

app.directive('myDirective', function() {
    return {
         // directive goes here
         // and some definitions
         link: function(scope, element, attrs) {
               scope.someOtherArray.push(other_obj)
         }
    }
}

and finally, in the HTML:

<div myDirective ng-repeat="obj in myArray"></div>

So, every time I add an element to myArray, another directive element is created and $scope.someOtherArray is modified. That works pretty well, but I found that myFunc() and the properties of the controller are difficult to test:

controller = $controller('MyController', { $scope: mockScope });
SpyOn(mockScope, 'myFunc').and.callThrough();
// expectGET and expectPOST here.
mockScope.myFunc();

However, after running that code, there were some objects (dependent on the custom directive) that were not being updated after calling mockScope.myFunc(); (such as someOtherArray). Apparently, I need to compile the custom directives manually:

var element = '<div myDirective ng-repeat="obj in myArray"></div>';
element = $compile(element)(mockScope);

Well, that seems a bit awkward. I was expecting that after running mockScope.myFunc() every side effect would take place automatically. Otherwise, I need to consider every directive involved in the process and compile each of them.

Is there a better way?