[chef] Kitchen Testing

[Douglas Garstang < >]

I'm trying to correctly use test kitchen (sorry if there's a separate mailing list for that - couldn't find one).

Up until now, in order to unit test (or at least quickly and repeatedly confirm) a cookbook works, the Vagrantfile had just contained the recipe for the cookbook. We have a base role, but our cookbooks typically don't need the base role to function and are therefore are not a dependancy.

This also means the base role is not in the Berksfile. However, it seems that kitchen reads the Berksfile. When I run a 'kitchen test', kitchen fails because it can't find the base role that I have put into the kitchen.yml file.

I'm not sure what to do here. It makes no sense to me to put the base role into the Berksfile, because it is not a dependancy. However, kitchen seems to need it. Adding the base role to the Berksfile would greatly increase the time required to quickly test a cookbook works.

If I did add it, this would mean that a 'kitchen test' would be basically the same as a 'vagrant up' since both include the cookbook AND the base role. I'm left wondering what the point of kitchen is at that point?

Thanks,

Douglas