A better way to specify fixtures

[binford2k]

Right now direct dependencies are specified in metadata.json and all modules required for testing, including fully expanded transitive dependencies, are specified in .fixtures.yml. This is often incredibly repetitive and I would love it if there were a way to resolve fixtures automatically, sort of the way bundle install will install gems and create a lockfile.

Eventually, this pattern could also be used to do things like resolve Puppetfile dependencies too.

[DavidS]

One of the ideas we've been bouncing around litmus is create a test-specific bolt project with all the stuff needed for testing (inventory, provisioning plan, dependencies, etc). That would allow us to use the bolt-project.yaml (maybe even dynamically generated from metadata.json) to resolve dependencies without having to manually maintain them.

[logicminds]

This has been a long running discussion with several attempts to resolve.

• Feature: metadata dependencies are auto installed puppetlabs_spec_helper#291
• Feature/fixture rebuild puppetlabs_spec_helper#109

One of the main problems is what happens when all the modules are coming from VCS instead of the forge for companies that are air-gapped, private modules or have strict security requirements.

Solution

Personally, this solution needs to be:

1. backwards compatible
2. easy to use

What comes to mind is the Puppetfile syntax.

1. Existing tools already work with it
2. Everyone knows it
3. Is ruby code, so technically can do fun things inside the puppetfile

If a Puppetfile exist, use Puppetfile instead in place of fixtures.
Have a property in metadata that enables the usage of Puppetfile for dependency management

"resolve_dependencies_with_puppetfile": true
"dependencies": [],
  

In order to populate the dependency list from the puppetfile, the pdk validate dependencies command should update the list automatically. BTW, having a dependency checker in the PDK would be amazing for those times you forget to update the metadata or just lazy.

For the .fixtures.yml file. The puppetlabs_spec_helper would need to convert the puppetfile to fixtures internally. But only if the resolve_dependencies_with_puppetfile is set to true.

This all seems doable IMHO.

1. Refactor puppetlabs_spec_helper to work with Puppetfile
2. Have puppetlabs_spec_helper seek out the new flag in the metadata.json file
3. Have pdk validate dependencies auto populate metadata.json dependencies based on Puppetfile
4. Optional, Puppetfile needs a way to specify dev dependencies like nwops-debug and others.

Hopefully, all of this makes sense.