Puppet-Retrospec

Generates puppet rspec test code based on the classes and defines inside the manifests directory. Aims to reduce some of the boilerplate coding with default test patterns.

Retrospec makes it dead simple to get started with puppet unit testing. When you run retrospec will scan you puppet manifests and actually write some very basic rspec-puppet test code. Thus this gem will retrofit your existing puppet module with everything needed to get going with puppet unit testing.

The project was named retrospec because there are many times when you need to retrofit your module with spec tests.

Build Status

Install

gem install puppet-retrospec

How to use

Run from a rake task

require 'puppet-retrospec'

desc "Scans the module directory and automatically creates basic spec tests"
task :retrospec do
  Retrospec.run
end

Run from the command line

$ retrospec -h
Options:
          --module-path, -m <s>:   destination directory to create spec tests in (Defaults to current directory)
         --template-dir, -t <s>:   Path to templates directory (only for overriding Retrospec templates)
    --enable-user-templates, -e:   Use Retrospec templates from /Users/cosman/.puppet_retrospec_templates
                     --help, -h:   Show this message

retrospec -m ~/projects/puppet_modules/apache

Example

Below you can see that it creates files for every resource in the tomcat module in addition to other files that you need for unit testing puppet code.

$ ls
CHANGELOG.md    CONTRIBUTING.md LICENSE     README.md   Rakefile    checksums.json  examples    manifests   metadata.json
$ pwd
/Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat
$ retrospec
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/spec_helper.rb
!! /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/.fixtures.yml already exists and differs from template
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/Gemfile
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/shared_contexts.rb
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/classes/
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/classes/tomcat_spec.rb
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/classes/params_spec.rb
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/defines/config/server/
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/defines/config/server/connector_spec.rb
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/defines/config/server/engine_spec.rb
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/defines/config/server/host_spec.rb
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/defines/config/server/service_spec.rb
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/defines/config/server/valve_spec.rb
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/defines/config/server_spec.rb
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/defines/instance/
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/defines/instance/package_spec.rb
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/defines/instance/source_spec.rb
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/defines/instance_spec.rb
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/defines/service_spec.rb
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/defines/setenv/
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/defines/setenv/entry_spec.rb
 + /Users/cosman/bodeco/puppet-retrospec/spec/fixtures/modules/tomcat/spec/defines/war_spec.rb

Looking at the file we can see that it did a lot of work for us. Below is the classes/tomcat_spec.rb file

require 'spec_helper'
require 'shared_contexts'
   describe 'tomcat' do
       # by default the hiera integration is commented out
       # but basically to mock hiera you first need to add a key/value pair
       # to the specific context in the spec/shared_contexts.rb file
       # Note: you can only use a single hiera context per describe/context block
       # rspec-puppet does not allow you to swap out hiera data on a per test block
       #include_context :hiera
       # below is the facts hash that gives you the ability to mock
       # facts on a per describe/context block.  If you use a fact in your
       # manifest you should mock the facts below.
       let(:facts) do
          {}
       end
       # below is a list of the resource parameters that you can override
       # by default all non-required parameters are commented out
       # while all required parameters will require you to add a value
       let(:params) do
         {
          #:catalina_home => $::tomcat::params::catalina_home,
          #:user => $::tomcat::params::user,
          #:group => $::tomcat::params::group,
          #:install_from_source => true,
          #:purge_connectors => false,
          #:manage_user => true,
          #:manage_group => true,
         }
       end
       # add these two lines in a single test block to enable puppet and hiera debug mode
       # Puppet::Util::Log.level = :debug
       # Puppet::Util::Log.newdestination(:console)
       it { should compile }
   end

About the test suite

At this time the test suite that is automatically generated is extremely basic. Essentially it just ensures that your code will compile correctly. However, one of the major stumbling blocks is just constructing everything in the spec directory which retrospec does for you automatically. Its now up to you to further enhance your test suite with more tests and conditional logic. For now you will probably want to read up on the following documentation:

How Does it do this

Basically Retrospec uses the puppet lexer and parser to scan your code in order to fill out some basic templates that will retrofit your puppet module with unit tests.

Overriding the templates

There may be a time when you want to override the default templates used to generate the rspec related files. To override these templates just set one of the following environment variables.

RETROSPEC_ENABLE_LOCAL_TEMPLATES=true
RETROSPEC_TEMPLATES_PATH=~/my_templates

Once one of the variables is set the retrospec will copy over all the templates from the gem location to the default or specified override templates path. If you have already created the a erb file in the templates location, then puppet-retrospec will not overwrite the file. You can set multiple template paths if you use them for different projects so just be sure the set the correctly template path environment variable when running retrospec.

Setting the RETROSPEC_ENABLE_LOCAL_TEMPLATES=true Environment variable will tell retrospec to use the default user template location.

The default location for the templates when using this variable is ~/.puppet_retrospec_templates

If you wish to override ~/.puppet_retrospec_templates location you can use the following environment variable RETROSPEC_TEMPLATES_PATH. If you set this variable you are not required set RETROSPEC_ENABLE_LOCAL_TEMPLATES.

RETROSPEC_TEMPLATES_PATH=~/my_templates

Troubleshooting

If you see the following, this error means that you need to add a fixture to the fixtures file. At this time I have no idea what your module requires. So just add the module that this class belongs to in the .fixtures file.

See fixtures doc for more information

8) tomcat::instance::source
     Failure/Error: it { should compile }
     Puppet::Error:
       Could not find class staging for coreys-macbook-pro-2.local on node coreys-macbook-pro-2.local
     # ./spec/defines/instance/source_spec.rb:34:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'

Running Tests

Puppet-retrospec tests its code against real modules downloaded directly from puppet forge. We also do a little mocking as well but for the majority of the tests we download are 'fixtures'.

To run a clean test suite and re-download you must run with environment variable set

RETROSPEC_CLEAN_UP_TEST_MODULES=true bundle exec rake spec

Otherwise to save time we skip the removal of test puppet modules therefore we don't re-download

bundle exec rake spec

Todo

Add support to fill out used facts in the unit tests automatically
Add describe blocks around conditions in test code that change the catalog compilation
Auto add dependicies to fixtures file

Support

Currently this library only supports ruby >= 1.9.3. It might work on 1.8.7 but I won't support if it fails.