beaker-rspec

beaker-rspec is a bridge between the puppet acceptance test harness (beaker) and rspec. It also integrates serverspec.

Upgrading from beaker-rspec 5 to 6

In beaker-rspec 6, we've picked up the newest beaker, 3.y. In this release, we've given up support for EoL Ruby and moved to 2.4 as our lowest tested version, as well as a number of other changes underneath.

To learn more about those changes, please checkout our how-to upgrade doc. Note that besides the Ruby version & beaker dependency change, nothing else was changed in beaker-rspec itself.

To figure out our current lowest supported Ruby version, check for the required_ruby_version key in beaker-rspec.gemspec. To see all Ruby versions we test on, check the list in .github/workflows/test.yml.

Typical Workflow

Beaker does setup and provision all nodes from your nodeset on each test run, and cleans up the VMs after use. During development on a module it can be very handy to keep the VMs available for inspection or reuse. Set BEAKER_destroy=no do skip the cleanup and BEAKER_provision=no once the VMs are created.

• Run tests with BEAKER_destroy=no, no setting for BEAKER_provision

  • beaker-rspec will use spec/acceptance/nodesets/default.yml node file
  • boxes will be newly provisioned
  • boxes will be preserved post-testing

• Run tests with BEAKER_destroy=no and BEAKER_provision=no

  • beaker-rspec will use spec/acceptance/nodesets/default.yml node file
  • boxes will be re-used from previous run
  • boxes will be preserved post-testing
  • Nodes become corrupted with too many test runs/bad data and need to be refreshed then set BEAKER_provision=yes
  • Testing is complete and you want to clean up, run once more with BEAKER_destroy unset
  • you can also:

cd .vagrant/beaker_vagrant_files/default.yml ; vagrant destroy --force

Supported ENV variables

• BEAKER_color: set to no to disable color output
• BEAKER_debug: set to any value other than no to enable beaker debug logging
• BEAKER_destroy: set to no to keep the VMs after the test run. Set to onpass to keep the VMs around only after a test failure.
• BEAKER_keyfile: specify alternate SSH key to access the test VMs
• BEAKER_options_file: set to the file path of the options file to be used as the default options for beaker. Equivalent to the --options-file parameter.
• BEAKER_provision: set to no to skip provisioning boxes before testing, beaker will then assume that boxes are already provisioned and reachable
• BEAKER_setdir: change the directory with nodesets. Defaults to the module's spec/acceptance/nodesets directory.
• BEAKER_set: set to the name of the node file to be used during testing (exclude .yml file extension, it will be added by beaker-rspec). The file is assumed to be in the setdir (see BEAKER_setdir).
• BEAKER_setfile - set to the full path to a node file be used during testing (be sure to include full path and file extensions, beaker-rspec will use this path without editing/altering it in any way)

For details on the specific mappings, the setup code and the beaker docs.

Building your Module Testing Environment

Using puppetlabs-mysql as an example module.

Clone the module repository of the module where you want to add tests

git clone https://github.com/puppetlabs/puppetlabs-mysql
cd puppetlabs-mysql

Install beaker-rspec

In module's top level directory edit the Gemfile. You should see a :system_tests or :acceptance group there, but if not, add beaker-rspec there:

group :acceptance do
  gem 'beaker-rspec'
end

Then run

bundle install

Create node files

These files indicate the nodes (or hosts) that the tests will be run on. By default, any node file called default.yml will be used. You can override this using the BEAKER_set environment variable to indicate an alternate file. Do not provide full path or the '.yml' file extension to BEAKER_set, beaker-rspec expands the filename to '${DIR}/${NAME}.yml'. The directory defaults to spec/acceptance/nodesets but can be overridden with the BEAKER_setdir variable. BEAKER_setdir gives full control over the path (including file extension).

Nodes are pulled from Puppet Labs Vagrant Boxes.

Example node files can be found here:

• Puppet Labs example Vagrant node files

Create the nodesets directory. From module's top level directory:

mkdir -p spec/acceptance/nodesets

Copy any nodesets that you wish to use into the nodesets directory.

Create the spec_helper_acceptance.rb

In the spec folder, you should see the project's spec_helper_acceptance.rb. This file contains all of the setup logic needed to get your Systems Under Test (SUTs) ready for testing. Note that puppetlabs-mysql's spec_helper_acceptance.rb file can be a little intimidating, so we're going to leave getting familiar with that to a later exercise. For now, create your own helper in the same directory. For example, my_spec_helper_acceptance.rb (creative, no?):

require 'beaker-rspec'

logger.error("LOADED MYYYYYYYYYY Spec Acceptance Helper")

# Install Puppet on all hosts
install_puppet_on(hosts, options)

RSpec.configure do |c|
  module_root = File.expand_path(File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), '..'))

  c.formatter = :documentation

  c.before :suite do
    # Install module to all hosts
    hosts.each do |host|
      install_dev_puppet_module_on(host, :source => module_root, :module_name => 'mysql',
          :target_module_path => '/etc/puppet/modules')
      # Install dependencies
      on(host, puppet('module', 'install', 'puppetlabs-stdlib'))

      # Add more setup code as needed
    end
  end
end

NOTE that the install_puppet_on method used above will install the latest Puppet 3.x version. If you'd like to install a more modern version, you can replace that line with this one:

install_puppet_agent_on(hosts, options)

This method will install the latest puppet-agent from the specified puppet collection (defaults to pc1).

Update spec_helper_acceptance.rb to reflect the module under test. You will need to set the correct module name and add any module dependencies. Place the file in the spec directory (in this case puppetlabs-mysql/spec)

Create spec tests for your module

Spec tests are written in RSpec. You can also use serverspec matchers to test resources.

Example spec file spec/acceptance/mysql_account_delete_spec.rb:

# NOTE: the require must match the name of the helper file created above.
#   If you changed the name there, you'll have to change it here.
#   You can verify this is correct when you see the log statement from the helper.
require 'my_spec_helper_acceptance'

describe 'mysql::server::account_security class' do
  let(:manifest) {
    <<-EOS
      class { 'mysql::server': remove_default_accounts => true }
    EOS
  }

  it 'should run without errors' do
    result = apply_manifest(manifest, :catch_failures => true)
    expect(result.exit_code).to eq 2
  end

  it 'should delete accounts' do
    grants_results = shell("mysql -e 'show grants for [email protected];'")
    expect(grants_results.exit_code).to eq 1
  end

  it 'should delete databases' do
    show_result = shell("mysql -e 'show databases;'")
    expect(show_result.stdout).not_to match /test/
  end

  it 'should run a second time without changes' do
    result = apply_manifest(manifest, :catch_failures => true)
    expect(result.exit_code).to eq 0
  end

  describe package('mysql-server') do
    it { is_expected.to be_installed }
  end
end

Run your spec tests

From module's top level directory

bundle exec rspec spec/acceptance

Transfer Notice

This plugin was originally authored by Puppet Inc. The maintainer preferred that Vox Pupuli take ownership of the module for future improvement and maintenance. Existing pull requests and issues were transferred over, please fork and continue to contribute here.

Previously: https://github.com/puppetlabs/beaker

License

This gem is licensed under the Apache-2 license.

Release information

To make a new release, please do:

• update the version in lib/beaker-rspec/version.rb
• Install gems with bundle install --with release --path .vendor
• generate the changelog with bundle exec rake changelog
• Check if the new version matches the closed issues/PRs in the changelog
• Create a PR with it
• After it got merged, push a tag. GitHub actions will do the actual release to rubygems and GitHub Packages