[chef] Re: Re: Re: Re: Continuous Integration

[Chad Woolley < >]

On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 8:09 PM, Erik Kastner 
<
 >
 wrote:
>
>
> I wonder if something like this could be useful (at least for file, dir, 
> template, etc)
> http://github.com/defunkt/fakefs

Ah, you are thinking unit testing, where I was thinking integration testing.

In my experience, unit testing Ops/OS/Deploy code is an exercise in
futility.  You can faithfully test drive the implementation as you
THINK it should be, but you invariably find that it doesn't work as
you expected, because of some unexpected behavior/interaction of the
OS or system.  So, you change the code to actually work on the real
system, then change your tests to match the code.  That is pretty
pointless, it doesn't even buy you the regression safety net of normal
unit tests (because upgrades to the OS/System could break you at any
time, even if your chef code doesn't change).  I suppose it does
provide syntax checking, but that's not worth the considerable effort,
in my opinion.

On the other hand, saying "after I run Chef, assert that a real remote
system should have the package X installed and service Y running" is
pretty useful.

-- Chad