Test Kitchen

A convergence integration test harness for configuration management systems.

Getting started

Project Setup

Install the test-kitchen gem. --pre is necessary because Test Kitchen 1.0.0 has not been released yet.

$ gem install test-kitchen --pre

This will expose the test-kitchen CLI. Run kitchen init to get started:

$ kitchen init
      create  .kitchen.yml

In this guide, we will be using the kitchen vagrant driver, so install that:

$ gem install kitchen-vagrant

Open up the .kitchen.yml file created in the root of your repository and modify it if you wish.

Now, it is time to get testing. Use the --parallel option to run your tests in parallel. Trust us, it's faster!

$ kitchen test

Helpful Switches

--destroy=always|passed|never
- passed (default): destroy the machine after a successful test run (which implies passing tests.)
- never: Never clean up builds, even if they pass or fail.
- always: Regardless of the success or failure of the build, destroy the machine.
--log-level=debug|info|warn|error|fatal - Set the log-level of the entire stack, including the chef-solo run.

The Kitchen YAML format

Test-Kitchen reads its configuration from the .kitchen.yml configuration file at the root of your cookbook. It closely resembles the format of .travis.yml which is intentional.

There are 4 stanzas in .kitchen.yml, driver_plugin, driver_config, platforms, and suites. driver_plugin, platforms, and suites are currently required. driver_config can optionally be used to set values for all platforms defined.

The driver_plugin stanza is only one line long and defines which driver is used by test-kitchen.

The platforms stanza defines individual virtual machines. Additional driver_config, node attributes, and run_list can be defined in this stanza

The suites stanza defines sets of tests that you intend to be run on each platform. A run_list and node attributes can be defined for each suite. The run_list and node attributes will be merged with that of each platform. In case of the conflict, the attributes defined on the suite will triumph.

---
driver_plugin: vagrant

platforms:
- name: ubuntu-12.04
  driver_config:
    box: opscode-ubuntu-12.04
    box_url: https://opscode-vm.s3.amazonaws.com/vagrant/boxes/opscode-ubuntu-12.04.box

- name: centos-6.3
  driver_config:
    box: opscode-centos-6.3
    box_url: https://opscode-vm.s3.amazonaws.com/vagrant/boxes/opscode-centos-6.3.box
  run_list:
  - recipe[yum::epel]

suites:
- name: stock_system_and_user
  run_list:
  - recipe[user::data_bag]
  - recipe[rvm::system]
  - recipe[rvm::user]
  attributes:
    users:
    - wigglebottom
    rvm:
      user_installs:
      - user: wigglebottom
        default_ruby: 1.8.7

Overriding .kitchen.yaml with .kitchen.<driver>.local.yml

TODO

A Note

This project is currently in rapid development which means frequent releases, potential for massive refactorings (that could be API breaking), and minimal to no documentation. This will change as the project transitions to be used in production environments.

Despite the warnings above, if you are still interested, please get in touch via freenode/IRC (#chef-hacking), Twitter (@fnichol), or Email (fnichol@nichol.ca).

For everyone else, watch this space.