This is a simple Puppet module that aims to provide a simple example of module testing. Included are unit tests and acceptance tests.

Unit tests are used to determine if a catalog can compile and if it looks the way we expect it to with specific parameters.

Acceptance tests are used to determine if applying a module to a system results in the expected state.

This uses rspec-puppet for unit tests and beaker-rspec for acceptance tests.

Relevant resources:

puppetlabs_spec_helper is used to make unit testing more convenient and easy.

Serverspec is what our acceptance tests are written with.

gem install bundler
bundle install                    # Install the required Rubygems

bundle exec rake spec

bundle exec rspec spec/acceptance # Acceptance tests (beaker-rspec)

Test it on Ubuntu:

BEAKER_setfile=spec/acceptance/nodesets/ubuntu-server-1404-x64.yml rake beaker

The following will list some Rake tasks that you might find useful:

rake -T

A couple of useful rake taks for this example:

rake lint    # puppet-lint
rake syntax  # Puppet syntax check (manifests and templates)

###.fixtures

This file defines a "sandbox" for our unit tests. Essentially, any dependencies that our module has will be listed in here so that they can be retrieved and placed in a "sandbox" during our tests. We also list our module here to make it available in the sandbox. See spec/fixtures below.

This is a feature of the puppetlabs_spec_helper

###Gemfile

This file lists what Rubygems are needed for this module's tests. Used with Bundler, this will install the required Gems and their dependencies.

###Rakefile

Provides "tasks" for making running the tests easier. Also specifies which libraries to use for the tests. Sometimes, this can also provide configuration options. In this example module, we pass some puppet-lint options.

###.rspec

Options for rspec. Simple and not required.

###spec/

This directory contains all of our tests and testing data.

###spec/spec_helper.rb

A "helper" for our unit tests. In our case, we're just using the puppetlabs_spec_helper, and this file just requires that.

Think of this as something like a standard library (stdlib) for module testing - useful, reusable code for testing.

###spec/spec_helper_acceptance

Similar to the regular spec_helper file, but this is specifically for our acceptance tests.

###spec/fixtures

This directory isn't directly used by the end user. puppetlabs_spec_helper uses this as a "sandbox" for running tests. See .fixtures above.

This is a feature of the puppetlabs_spec_helper

####spec/acceptance

Our acceptance tests. We use Beaker-rspec for these.

####spec/acceptance/nodesets

Contains files that specify what types of systems should be available for our Beaker tests.

####spec/acceptance/sample_test_spec.rb

This is the main spec test for our module. Refer to Serverspec for information on how to write these tests.

####spec/acceptance/unsupported_spec.rb

This is a test for unsupported platforms. This module isn't actually setup to use this, but it's there for reference. Basically, this should test that the module fails.

####spec/classes

This contains our unit tests, utilizing rspec-puppet

####spec/classes/sample_test_spec.rb

This is a unit test for our module. You'll notice it contains almost three times as many lines as our module code itself!

Contributions are more than welcome. Keep in mind this is supposed to be a fairly simple example ;)

Josh Beard, [email protected]