Unable to test my cookbook w/ ChefSpec when including datadog::dd-handler

[jeffbyrnes]

I’m using datadog v2.5.0.

I have a cookbook, with a recipe that:

include_recipe 'datadog::dd-agent'
include_recipe 'datadog::dd-handler'

However, this is the output I get:

6) ds_base::monitoring When all attributes are default, on Ubuntu 16.04 converges successfully
   Failure/Error: expect { chef_run }.to_not raise_error

     expected no Exception, got #<LoadError: cannot load such file -- chef/handler/datadog> with backtrace:
       # /var/folders/30/nsmp68z977s8q1x10z4h9_fr0000gn/T/chefspec20160808-17741-60xwg5file_cache_path/cookbooks/datadog/recipes/dd-handler.rb:38:in `from_file'
       # /var/folders/30/nsmp68z977s8q1x10z4h9_fr0000gn/T/chefspec20160808-17741-60xwg5file_cache_path/cookbooks/ds_base/recipes/monitoring.rb:12:in `from_file'
       # ./spec/unit/recipes/monitoring_spec.rb:24:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'
       # ./spec/unit/recipes/monitoring_spec.rb:28:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'
       # ./spec/unit/recipes/monitoring_spec.rb:28:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'
   # ./spec/unit/recipes/monitoring_spec.rb:28:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

If I chef gem install chef-handler-datadog, things work properly, but that feels a bit janky.

[olivielpeau]

Hi @jeffbyrnes and thanks for your feedback!

The dd-handler recipe has to require chef/handler/datadog because some versions of the chef_handler cookbook need this require statement to work properly.

Obviously using the require doesn't work when the chef-handler-datadog gem hasn't actually been installed by the chef_gem resource that precedes the require. So dd-handler doesn't work for chefspec runs and for chef runs that use the why-run mode (see related issue #118).

The only thing I can think of to fix your issue properly on our end would be to remove this require and change the version constraint on the chef_handler dep to a version that can load the handler on its own. This would require quite some testing on the cookbook to determine which version of chef_handler works well, I'll try to spend some time on this for the next minor release.

In the short term I don't think there's a way to fix this other than what you did (i.e. installing the gem locally). Let me know what you think, thanks!

See also https://github.com/chef-cookbooks/chef_handler/issues/21

[jeffbyrnes]

@olivielpeau very helpful, thanks!

[martinisoft]

A trick we've done ourselves is to use ChefSpec to stub out the recipe call to avoid it entirely. Here is a snippet:

before(:each) do
    allow_any_instance_of(Chef::Recipe).to receive(:include_recipe).and_call_original
    allow_any_instance_of(Chef::Recipe).to receive(:include_recipe).with('datadog::dd-handler').and_return('true')
end

This will allow other recipes through but stub out the dd-handler recipe entirely.