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Hatchet

Hatchet is an integration testing library for developing Heroku buildpacks.

Install

To get started, add this gem to your Gemfile:

gem "heroku_hatchet"

Then run:

$ bundle install

This library uses the Heroku CLI and API. You will need to make your API key available to the system ($ heroku login). If you're running on a CI platform, you'll need to generate an OAuth token and make it available on the system you're running on see the "CI" section below.

About Hatchet

Why Test a Buildpack?

Testing a buildpack prevents regressions, and pushes out new features faster and easier.

What can Hatchet test?

Hatchet can easily test certain operations: deployment of buildpacks, getting the build output and running arbitrary interactive processes (e.g. heroku run bash). Hatchet can also test running Heroku CI against an app.

How does Hatchet test a buildpack?

To be able to check the behavior of a buildpack, you have to execute it. Hatchet does this by creating new Heroku apps heroku create, setting them to use your branch of the buildpack (must be available publicly) heroku buildpacks:set https://github.com/your/buildpack-url#branch-name, then deploying the app git push heroku master. It has built-in features such as API rate throttling (so your deploys slow down instead of fail) and internal retry mechanisms. Once deployed, it can heroku run <command> for you to allow you to assert behavior.

Can I use Hatchet to test my buildpack locally?

Yes, but the workflow is less than ideal since Heroku (and by extension, Hatchet) need your work to be available at a public URL. Let's say you're doing TDD and have already written a single failing test. You are developing on a branch and have already committed the test to that branch. To test your new code, you'll need to commit what you've got, push it to your public source repository.

$ git add -P
$ git commit -m "[ci skip] WIP"
$ git push origin <current-branchname>
$ bundle exec rspec spec/path-to-your-test.rb:5 # This syntax focus runs a single test on line number 5

Now when the tests execute Hatchet will use your code on your public branch. If you don't like a bunch of ugly "wip" commits you can keep amending the same commit over and over while you're iterating, alternatively you can rebase your commits when you're done.

Isn't deploying an app to Heroku overkill for testing? I want to go faster.

Hatchet is for integration testing. You can also unit test your code if you want your tests to execute much quicker. If your buildpack is written in bash, there is shUnit2, for example. It is recommended that you use both integration and unit tests.

But can't you integration test the buildpack by calling bin/compile directly without having to jump through deploying a Heroku app? It is possible to call your bin/compile script from your machine locally without Hatchet, but you'll not have access to config vars, addons, release phase, heroku run, and many more features. Also, calling bin/compile is very slow, and a medium to large buildpack can have upwards of 70 different integration test cases. If each were to take 1 minute optimistically, it would take over an hour to run your whole suite. Since Hatchet can be safely run via a parallel runner, it can execute most of these builds in parallel, and the whole suite would take roughly 5 minutes when running on CI.

In addition to speed, Hatchet provides isolation. Suppose you're executing bin/compile locally. In that case, you need to be very careful not to pollute the environment or local disk between runs, or you'll end up with odd failures that are seemingly impossible to hunt down.

Quicklinks

Getting Started

Hatchet Init

If you're working in a project that does not already have hatchet tests you can run this command to get started quickly:

Make sure you're in directory that contains your buildpack and run:

$ gem install heroku_hatchet
$ hatchet init

This will bootstrap your project with the necessarry files to test your buildpack. Including but not limited to:

  • Gemfile
  • hatchet.json
  • spec/spec_helper.rb
  • spec/hatchet/buildpack_spec.rb
  • .circleci/config.yml
  • .github/dependabot.yml
  • .gitignore

Once this executes successfully then you can run your tests with:

$ bundle exec rspec

Note: You'll need to update the buildpack_spec.rb file to remove the exception

You can also focus a specific file or test by providing a path and line number:

$ bundle exec rspec spec/hatchet/buildpack_spec:5

Keep reading to find out more about how hatchet works.

Concepts

Specify buildpack

Tell Hatchet what buildpack you want to use by default by setting environment variables, this is commonly done in the spec_helper.rb file:

ENV["HATCHET_BUILDPACK_BASE"] = "https://github.com/path-to-your/buildpack"
require 'hatchet'`

If you do not specify HATCHET_BUILDPACK_BASE the default Ruby buildpack will be used. If you do not specify a HATCHET_BUILDPACK_BRANCH the current branch you are on will be used. This is how the Ruby buildpack runs tests on branches on CI (by leaving HATCHET_BUILDPACK_BRANCH blank).

The workflow generally looks like this:

  1. Make a change to the codebase
  2. Commit it and push to GitHub so it's publicly available
  3. Execute your test suite or individual test
  4. Repeat until you're happy
  5. Be happy

Example apps:

Hatchet works by deploying example apps to Heroku's production service first you'll need an app to deploy that works with the buildpack you want to test. This method is preferred if you've got a very small app that might only need one or two files. There are two ways to give Hatchet a test app, you can either specify a remote app or a local directory.

  • Local directory use of Hatchet:
Hatchet::Runner.new("path/to/local/directory").deploy do |app|
end

An example of this is the heroku/nodejs buildpack tests.

You can either check in your apps to your source control or, you can use code to generate them, for example:

If you generate example apps programmatically, then add the folder you put them in to your .gitignore.

Note: If you're not using the hatchet.json you'll still need an empty one in your project with contents {}

  • Github app use of Hatchet:

Instead of storing your apps locally or generating them, you can point Hatchet at a remote github repo. This method of storing apps on GitHub is preferred is you have an app that is large or has many files (for example, a Rails app).

Hatchet expects a json file in the root of your buildpack called hatchet.json. You can configure the install options using the "hatchet" key. In this example, we're telling Hatchet to install the given repos to our test/fixtures directory instead of the current default directory.

{
  "hatchet": {"directory": "test/fixtures"},
  "rails3":  ["sharpstone/rails3_mri_193"],
  "rails2":  ["sharpstone/rails2blog"],
  "bundler": ["sharpstone/no_lockfile"]
}

When you run $ hatchet install it will grab the git repos from github and place them on your local machine in a file structure that looks like this:

test/
  fixtures/
    repos/
      rails3/
        rails3_mri_193/
      rails2/
        rails2blog/
      bundler/
        no_lockfile/

You can reference one of these applications in your test by using it's git name:

Hatchet::Runner.new('no_lockfile')

If you have conflicting names, use full paths like Hatchet::Runner.new("sharpstone/no_lockfile").

When you run hatchet install it will lock all the Repos to a specific commit. This is done so that if a repo changes upstream that introduces an error the test suite won't automatically pick it up. For example in https://github.com/sharpstone/lock_fail/commit/e61ba47043fbae131abb74fd74added7e6e504df an error is added, but this will only cause a failure if your project intentionally locks to commit e61ba47043fbae131abb74fd74added7e6e504df or later.

You can re-lock your projects by running hatchet lock. This modifies the hatchet.lock file. For example:

---
- - test/fixtures/repos/bundler/no_lockfile
  - 1947ce9a9c276d5df1c323b2ad78d1d85c7ab4c0
- - test/fixtures/repos/ci/rails5_ci_fails_no_database
  - 3044f05febdfbbe656f0f5113cf5968ca07e34fd
- - test/fixtures/repos/ci/rails5_ruby_schema_format
  - 3e63c3e13f435cf4ab11265e9abd161cc28cc552
- - test/fixtures/repos/default/default_ruby
  - 6e642963acec0ff64af51bd6fba8db3c4176ed6e
- - test/fixtures/repos/lock/lock_fail
  - da748a59340be8b950e7bbbfb32077eb67d70c3c
- - test/fixtures/repos/lock/lock_fail_main
  - main
- - test/fixtures/repos/rails2/rails2blog
  - b37357a498ae5e8429f5601c5ab9524021dc2aaa
- - test/fixtures/repos/rails3/rails3_mri_193
  - 88c5d0d067cfd11e4452633994a85b04627ae8c7

Note: If you don't want to lock to a specific commit, you can always use the latest commit by specifying main manually as seen above. This will always give you the latest commit on the main branch. The master keyword is supported as well.

Deploying apps

Once you've got an app and have set up your buildpack, you can deploy an app and assert based on the output (all examples use rspec for testing framework).

Hatchet::Runner.new("default_ruby").deploy do |app|
  expect(app.output).to match("Installing dependencies using bundler")
end

By default, an error will be raised if the deploy doesn't work, which forces the test to fail. If you're trying to test failing behavior (for example you want to test that an app without a Gemfile.lock fails to build), you can manually allow failures:

Hatchet::Runner.new("no_lockfile", allow_failure: true).deploy do |app|
  expect(app).not_to be_deployed
  expect(app.output).to include("Gemfile.lock required")
end

Build versus run testing

In addition to testing what the build output was, the next most common thing to assert is that behavior at runtime produces expected results. Hatchet provides a helper for calling heroku run <cmd> and asserting against it. For example:

Hatchet::Runner.new("minimal_webpacker", buildpacks: buildpacks).deploy do |app, heroku|
  expect(app.run("which node")).to match("/app/bin/node")
end

In this example, Hatchet is calling heroku run which node and passing the results back to the test so we can assert against it.

  • Asserting exit status:

In ruby the way you assert a command you ran on the shell was successful or not is by using the $? "magic object". By default calling app.run will set this variable which can be used in your tests:

Hatchet::Runner.new("minimal_webpacker", buildpacks: buildpacks).deploy do |app, heroku|
  expect(app.run("which node")).to match("/app/bin/node")
  expect($?.exitstatus).to eq(0)
  expect($?.success?).to be_truthy

  # In Ruby all objects except `nil` and `false` are "truthy"
  # in this case it could also be tested using `be_true` but
  # it's best practice to use this `be_truthy` test helper instead
end

You can disable error on exit status behavior, see how to do it in the reference tests

  • Escaping and raw mode:

By default app.run() will escape the input so you can safely call app.run("cmd && cmd") and it works as expected. But if you want to do something custom, you can enable raw mode by passing in raw: true see how to do it in the reference tests. If you do that, you'll need to ensure your inputs are propperly shell escaped.

  • Heroku options:

You can use all the options available to heroku run bash such as heroku run bash --env FOO=bar see how to do it in the reference tests

Modifying apps on disk before deploy

Hatchet is designed to play nicely with running tests in parallel via threads or processes. To support this the code that is executed in the deploy block is being run in a new directory. This allows you to modify files on disk safely without having to worry about race conditions. Still, it introduces the unexpected behavior that changes might not work like you think they will.

One typical pattern is to have a minimal example app, and then to modify it as needed before your tests. You can do this safely using the before_deploy block.

Hatchet::Runner.new("default_ruby").tap do |app|
  app.before_deploy do
    out = `echo 'ruby "2.7.1"' >> Gemfile`
    raise "Echo command failed: #{out}" unless $?.success?
  end
  app.deploy do |app|
    expect(app.output).to include("Using Ruby version: ruby-2.6.6")
  end
end

This example will add the string ruby "2.7.1" to the end of the Gemfile on disk. It accomplishes this by shelling out to echo. If you prefer, you can directly use File.open to write contents to disk.

Note: The above tap method in ruby returns itself in a block, it makes this example cleaner.

Note: that we're checking the status code of the shell command we're running (shell commands are executed via backticks in ruby), a common pattern is to write a simple helper function to automate this:

# spec_helper.rb

def run!(cmd)
  out = `#{cmd}`
  raise "Command #{cmd} failed with output #{out}" unless $?.success?
  out
end

Then you can use it in your tests:

Hatchet::Runner.new("default_ruby").tap do |app|
  app.before_deploy do
    run!(%Q{echo 'ruby "2.7.1"'})
  end
  app.deploy do |app|
    expect(app.output).to include("Using Ruby version: ruby-2.6.6")
  end
end

Note: that %Q{} is a method of creating a string in Ruby if we didn't use it here we could escape the quotes:

run!("echo 'ruby \"2.7.1\"'")

In Ruby double quotes allow for the insert operator in strings, but single quotes do not:

name = "schneems"
puts "Hello #{name}"     # => Hello schneems
puts 'Hello #{name}'     # => Hello #{name}
puts "Hello '#{name}'"   # => Hello 'schneems'
puts %Q{Hello "#{name}"} # => Hello "schneems"

App reaping

When your tests are running you'll see hatchet output some details about what it's doing:

Hatchet setup: "hatchet-t-bed73940a6" for "rails51_webpacker"

And later:

Destroying "hatchet-t-fd25e3626b". Hatchet app limit: 80

If an app is not deleted for some reason, it will be deleted by a future test run. Applications not deleted by calling teardown will be allowed to live for HATCHET_ALIVE_TTL_MINUTES. This behavior allows multiple test runs on the same hatchet account without one test run deleting apps that another one still needs.

For example, if you set HATCHET_ALIVE_TTL_MINUTES=7, Hatchet will ensure that any apps that are older than 7 minutes will be deleted. If all of your tests finish in under 7 minutes then apps won't be deleted mid-deploy. When apps are deleted, you'll see a warning in your output. It could indicate you're not properly cleaning up and calling teardown! on some of your apps, or it could mean that you're attempting to execute more tests concurrently than your HATCHET_APP_LIMIT allows. Or that something else prevented apps from getting deleted on teardown, such as a Heroku API outage.

It's recommended you don't use your personal Heroku API key for running tests on a CI server since the hatchet apps count against your account maximum limits. Running tests using your account locally is fine for debugging one or two tests.

If you find your local account has hit your maximum app limit, one handy trick is to get rid of any old "default" Heroku apps you've created. This plugin (https://github.com/hunterloftis/heroku-destroy-temp) can help:

$ heroku plugins:install heroku-destroy-temp
$ heroku apps:destroy-temp

This won't detect hatchet apps, but it's still handy for cleaning up other unused apps.

Deploying multiple times

If your buildpack uses the cache, you'll likely want to deploy multiple times against the same app to assert the cache was used. Here's an example of how to do that:

Hatchet::Runner.new("python_default").deploy do |app|
  expect(app.output).to match(/Installing pip/)

  # Redeploy with changed requirements file
  run!(%Q{echo "pygments" >> requirements.txt})
  app.commit!

  app.push! # <======= HERE

  expect(app.output).to match("Requirements file has been changed, clearing cached dependencies")
end

Testing CI

You can run an app against CI using the run_ci command (instead of deploy). You can re-run tests against the same app with the run_again command.

Hatchet::Runner.new("python_default").run_ci do |test_run|
  expect(test_run.output).to match("Downloading nose")
  expect(test_run.status).to eq(:succeeded)

  test_run.run_again

  expect(test_run.output).to match("installing from cache")
  expect(test_run.output).to_not match("Downloading nose")
end

Note: That thing returned by the run_ci command is not an "app" object but rather a test_run object.

  • test_run.output will have the setup and test output of your tests.
  • test_run.app has a reference to the "app" you're testing against, however currently no heroku create is run (as it's not needed to run tests, only a pipeline and a blob of code).

An exception will be raised if either the test times out or a status of :errored or :failed is returned. If you expect your test to fail, you can pass in allow_failure: true when creating your hatchet runner. If you do that, you'll also get access to different statuses:

  • test_run.status will return a symbol of the status of your test. Statuses include, but are not limited to :pending, :building, :errored, :creating, :succeeded, and :failed

You can pass in a different timeout to the run_ci method run_ci(timeout: 300).

You probably need an app.json in the root directory of the app you're deploying. For example:

{
  "environments": {
    "test": {
      "addons":[
         "heroku-postgresql"
      ]
    }
  }
}

This is on a Rails5 test app that needs the database to run.

Do NOT specify a buildpacks key in the app.json because Hatchet will automatically do this for you. If you need to set buildpacks, you can pass them into the buildpacks: keyword argument:

buildpacks = [
  "https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-pgbouncer.git",
  :default
]

Hatchet::Runner.new("rails5_ruby_schema_format", buildpacks: buildpacks).run_ci do |test_run|
  # ...
end

Note that the :default symbol (like a singleton string object in Ruby) can be used for where you want your buildpack inserted, it will be replaced with your app's repo and git branch you're testing against.

Testing on local disk without deploying

Sometimes you might want to assert something against a test app without deploying. This modification is tricky if you're modifying files or the environment in your test. To help out there's a helper in_directory_fork:

Hatchet::App.new('rails6-basic').in_directory_fork do
  require 'language_pack/rails5'
  require 'language_pack/rails6'

  expect(LanguagePack::Rails5.use?).to eq(false)
  expect(LanguagePack::Rails6.use?).to eq(true)
end

Running your buildpack tests on a CI service

Once you've got your tests working locally, you'll likely want to get them running on CI. For reference, see the Circle CI config from this repo and the Heroku CI config from the ruby buildpack.

To make running on CI easier, there is a setup script in Hatchet that can be run on your CI server each time before your tests are executed:

bundle exec hatchet ci:setup

If you're a Heroku employee, see private instructions for setting up test users to generate a user a grab the API token.

Once you have an API token you'll want to set up these env vars with your CI provider:

HATCHET_APP_LIMIT=100
HATCHET_RETRIES=2
HEROKU_API_KEY=<redacted>
HEROKU_API_USER=<redacted@example.com>

You can reference this PR for getting a buildpack set up from scratch with tests to see what kinds of files you might need: sharpstone/force_absolute_paths_buildpack#2.

Reference docs

The Hatchet::Runner.new takes several arguments.

Init options

  • stack (String): The Heroku stack to use for the app. If this is not set, the stack will be determined from HATCHET_DEFAULT_STACK, or else the Heroku platform's default stack.
Hatchet::Runner.new("default_ruby", stack: "heroku-16").deploy do |app|
  # ...
end
  • name (String): The name of an app you want to use. If you choose to provide your own app name, then Hatchet will not reap it, you'll have to delete it manually.
  • allow_failure (Boolean): If set to a truthy value then the test won't error if the deploy fails
  • labs (Array): Heroku has "labs" that are essentially features that are not enabled by default, one of the most popular ones is "preboot" https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/preboot.
  • buildpacks (Array): Pass in the buildpacks you want to use against your app
Hatchet::Runner.new("default_ruby", buildpacks: ["heroku/nodejs", :default]).deploy do |app|
  # ...
end

In this example, the app would use the nodejs buildpack, and then :default gets replaced by your Git url and branch name.

  • before_deploy (Block): Instead of using the tap syntax you can provide a block directly to hatchet app initialization. Example:
Hatchet::Runner.new("default_ruby", before_deploy: ->{ FileUtils.touch("foo.txt")}).deploy do
  # Assert stuff
end

A block in ruby is essentially an un-named method. Think of it as code to be executed later. See docs below for more info on blocks, procs and lambdas.

  • config (Hash): You can set config vars against your app:
config = { "DEPLOY_TASKS" => "run:bloop", "FOO" => "bar" }
Hatchet::Runner.new('default_ruby', config: config).deploy do |app|
  expect(app.run("echo $DEPLOY_TASKS").to match("run:bloop")
end

A hash in Ruby is like a dict in python. It is a set of key/value pairs. The syntax => is called a "hashrocket" and is an alternative syntax to "json" syntax for hashes. It is used to allow for string keys instead of symbol keys.

  • run_multi (Boolean): Allows you to run more than a single "one-off" dyno at a time (the HATCHET_EXPENSIVE_MODE env var must be set to use this feature). By default, "free" Heroku apps are restricted to only allowing one dyno to run at a time. You can increase this limit by scaling an application to paid application, but it will incur charges against your application:
Hatchet::Runner.new("default_ruby", run_multi: true).deploy do |app|
  # This code runs in the background
  app.run_multi("ls") do |out, status|
    expect(status.success?).to be_truthy
    expect(out).to include("Gemfile")
  end

  # This code runs in the background in parallel
  app.run_multi("ruby -v") do |out, status|
    expect(status.success?).to be_truthy
    expect(out).to include("ruby")
  end

  # This line will be reached before either of the above blocks finish
end

In this example, the heroku run ls and heroku run ruby -v will be executed concurrently. The order that the run_multi blocks execute is not guaranteed. You can toggle this run_multi setting on globally by using HATCHET_RUN_MULTI=1. Without this setting enabled, you might need to add a sleep between multiple app.run invocations.

WARNING: Enabling run_multi setting on an app will charge your Heroku account 🤑. WARNING: Do not use run_multi if you're not using the deploy block syntax or manually call teardown! inside the text context more info about how behavior does not work with the after block syntax in rspec. WARNING: To work, run_multi requires your application to have a web process associated with it.

  • retries (Integer): When passed in, this value will be used insead of the global HATCHET_RETRIES set via environment variable. When allow_failures: true is set as well as a retries value, then the application will not retry pushing to Heroku.

App methods:

  • app.set_config(): Updates the configuration on your app taking in a hash

You can also update your config using the set_config method:

app = Hatchet::Runner.new("default_ruby")
app.set_config({"DEPLOY_TASKS" => "run:bloop", "FOO" => "bar"})
app.deploy do
  expect(app.run("echo $DEPLOY_TASKS").to match("run:bloop")
end
  • app.get_config(): returns the Heroku value for a specific env var:
app = Hatchet::Runner.new("default_ruby")
app.set_config({"DEPLOY_TASKS" => "run:bloop", "FOO" => "bar"})
app.get_config("DEPLOY_TASKS") # => "run:bloop"
  • app.set_lab(): Enables the specified lab/feature on the app
  • app.add_database(): adds a database to the app, defaults to the "dev" database
  • app.update_stack(): Change the app's stack to that specified (for example "heroku-20"). Will take effect on the next build.
  • app.run(): Runs a heroku run bash session with the arguments, covered above.
  • app.run_multi(): Runs a heroku run bash session in the background and yields the results. This requires the run_multi flag of the app to be set to true, which will charge your application (the HATCHET_EXPENSIVE_MODE env var must also be set to use this feature). Example above.
  • app.create_app: Can be used to manually create the app without deploying it (You probably want setup! though)
  • app.setup!: Gets the application in a state ready for deploy.
    • Creates the Heroku app
    • Sets up any specified labs (from initialization)
    • Sets up any specified buildpacks
    • Sets up specified config
    • Calls the contents of the before_deploy block
  • app.before_deploy: Allows you to update the before_deploy block
Hatchet::Runner.new("default_ruby").tap do |app|
  app.before_deploy do
    FileUtils.touch("foo.txt")
  end
  app.deploy do
  end
end

Has the same result as:

before_deploy_proc = Proc.new do
  FileUtils.touch("foo.txt")
end

Hatchet::Runner.new("default_ruby", before_deploy: before_deploy_proc).deploy do |app|
end

You can call multiple blocks by specifying (:prepend or :append):

Hatchet::Runner.new("default_ruby").tap do |app|
  app.before_deploy do
    FileUtils.touch("foo.txt")
  end

  app.before_deploy(:append) do
    FileUtils.touch("bar.txt")
  end
  app.deploy do
  end
end
  • app.commit!: Will updates the contents of your local git dir if you've modified files on disk
Hatchet::Runner.new("python_default").deploy do |app|
  expect(app.output).to match(/Installing pip/)

  # Redeploy with changed requirements file
  run!(%Q{echo "" >> requirements.txt})
  run!(%Q{echo "pygments" >> requirements.txt})

  app.commit! # <=== Here

  app.push!
end

Note: Any changes to disk from a before_deploy block will be committed automatically after the block executes

  • app.in_directory: Runs the given block in a temp directory (but in the same process). One advanced debugging technique is to indefinitely pause test execution after outputting the directory so you can cd there and manually debug:
Hatchet::Runner.new("python_default").in_directory do |app|
  puts "Temp dir is: #{Dir.pwd}"
  STDIN.gets("foo") # <==== Pauses tests until stdin receives "foo"
end

Note: If you want to execute tests in this temp directory, you likely want to use in_directory_fork otherwise, you might accidentally contaminate the current environment's variables if you modify them.

  • app.in_directory_fork: Runs the given block in a temp directory and inside of a forked process, an example given above.
  • app.original_source_code_directory: Returns the directory of the example application on disk, this is NOT the temp directory that you're currently executing against. It's probably not what you want.
  • app.deploy: Your main method takes a block to execute after the deploy is successful. If no block is provided, you must manually call app.teardown! (see below for an example).
  • app.output: The output contents of the deploy
  • app.platform_api: Returns an instance of the platform-api Heroku client. If Hatchet doesn't give you access to a part of Heroku that you need, you can likely do it with the platform-api client.
  • app.push!: Push code to your Heroku app. It can be used inside of a deploy block to re-deploy.
  • app.run_ci: Runs Heroku CI against the app returns a TestRun object in the block
  • app.teardown!: This method is called automatically when using app.deploy in block mode after the deploy block finishes. When called it will delete the application.

Here is an example of a test that creates and deploys an app manually (without a block), then later tears it down manually. If you deploy an application without calling teardown! then hatchet will leak apps.

before(:each) do
  @app = Hatchet::Runner.new("default_ruby")
  @app.deploy
end

after(:each) do
  @app&.teardown!
end

it "uses ruby" do
  expect(@app.run("ruby -v")).to match("ruby")
end
  • test_run.run_again: Runs the app again in Heroku CI
  • test_run.status: Returns the status of the CI run (possible values are :pending, :building, :creating, :succeeded, :failed, :errored)
  • test_run.output: The output of a given test run

ENV vars

HATCHET_BUILDPACK_BASE=https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-nodejs.git
HATCHET_BUILDPACK_BRANCH=<branch name if you dont want Hatchet to set it for you>
HATCHET_RETRIES=2
HATCHET_APP_LIMIT=(set to something low like 20 locally, set higher like 80-100 on CI)
HEROKU_API_KEY=<redacted>
HEROKU_API_USER=<redacted@redacted.com>
HATCHET_ALIVE_TTL_MINUTES=7

# HATCHET_RUN_MULTI=1      # WARNING: Setting this env var will incur charges against your account. To use this env var you must also enable `HATCHET_EXPENSIVE_MODE`
# HATCHET_EXPENSIVE_MODE=1 # WARNING: Do not set this environment variable unless you're okay with possibly large bills
# HEROKU_DEBUG_EXPENSIVE=1 # WARNING: This will prevent apps from being cleaned up automatically and you will be billed for any apps left running

The syntax to set an env var in Ruby is ENV["HATCHET_RETRIES"] = "2" all env vars are strings.

  • HATCHET_BUILDPACK_BASE: This is the URL where Hatchet can find your buildpack. It must be public for Heroku to be able to use your buildpack.
  • HATCHET_BUILDPACK_BRANCH: By default, Hatchet will use your current git branch name. If, for some reason, git is not available or you want to manually specify it like ENV["HATCHET_BUILDPACK_BRANCH'] = ENV[MY_CI_BRANCH] then you can.
  • HATCHET_RETRIES If the ENV['HATCHET_RETRIES'] is set to a number, deploys are expected to work and automatically retry that number of times. Due to testing using a network and random failures, setting this value to 3 retries seems to work well. If an app cannot be deployed within its allotted number of retries, an error will be raised. The downside of a larger number is that your suite will keep running for much longer when there are legitimate failures.
  • HATCHET_APP_LIMIT: The maximum number of applications that hatchet is allowed to utilize on your account. If you hit this limit mid-test then Hatchet will need to wait until other tests finish and delete their apps. Keep in mind that you may have several concurrent CI executions on the same account competing for the same limited number of apps.
  • HEROKU_API_KEY: The API key of your test account user. If you run locally without this set, it will use your personal credentials.
  • HEROKU_API_USER: The email address of your user account. If you run locally without this set, it will use your personal credentials.
  • HATCHET_DEFAULT_STACK: The default Heroku stack to be used when an explicit stack is not passed to App.new. If this is not set, apps will instead use Heroku platform's default stack.
  • HATCHET_RUN_MULTI: If enabled, this will scale up deployed apps to "standard-1x" once deployed instead of running on the free tier. This enables the run_multi method capability, however scaling up is not free. WARNING: Setting this env var will incur charges to your Heroku account. We recommended never to enable this setting unless you work for Heroku. To use this you must also set HATCHET_EXPENSIVE_MODE=1
  • HATCHET_EXPENSIVE_MODE: This is intended to be a "safety" environment variable. If it is not set, Hatchet will prevent you from using the run_multi: true setting or the HATCHET_RUN_MULTI environment variables. There are still ways to incur charges without this feature, but unless you're absolutely confident your test setup will not leave "orphan" apps that are billing you, do not enable this setting. Even then, only set this value if you work for Heroku. To recap WARNING: setting this is expensive.
  • HEROKU_DEBUG_EXPENSIVE: If set, hatchet will not delete applications on teardown. This can be used to introspect build logs or run heroku run bash on the application created for the failed test. Note that if another hatchet process runs after HATCHET_ALIVE_TTL_MINUTES then it will delete your applications.

Basic

Basic rspec

Hatchet needs to run inside of a test framework such as minitest or rspec. Here's an example of some existing test suites that use Hatchet: This project uses rspec to run it's own tests you can use these as a reference as well as the heroku-ruby-buildpack. If you're new to Ruby, testing, or Hatchet, it is recommended to reference other project's tests heavily. If you can't pick between minitest and rspec, go with rspec since that's what most reference tests use.

Whatever testing framework you chose, we recommend using a parallel test runner when running the full suite. parallel_split_test.

rspec plugins - Rspec has useful plugins, such as gem 'rspec-retry' which will re-run any failed tests a given number of times (I recommend setting this to at least 2) to decrease false negatives in your tests when running on CI.

Rspec is a testing framework for Ruby. It allows you to "describe" your tests using strings and blocks. This section is intended to be a brief introduction and includes a few pitfalls but is not comprehensive.

In your directory rspec assumes a spec/ folder. It's common to have a spec_helper.rb in the root of that folder:

  • spec/spec_helper.rb

Here's an example of a spec_helper.rb: https://github.com/sharpstone/force_absolute_paths_buildpack/blob/master/spec/spec_helper.rb

In this file, you'll require files you need to set up the project. You can also set environment variables like ENV["HATCHET_BUILDPACK_BASE"]. You can use it to configure your app. Any methods you define in this file will be available to your tests. For example:

def run!(cmd)
  out = `#{cmd}`
  raise "Error running #{cmd}, output: #{out}" unless $?.success?
  out
end
  • spec/hatchet/buildpack_spec.rb

Rspec knows a file is a test file or not by the name. It looks for files that end in spec.rb you can have as many as you want. I recommend putting them in a "spec/hatchet" sub-folder.

  • File contents

In rspec you can group several tests under a "description" using Rspec.describe. Here's an example: https://github.com/sharpstone/force_absolute_paths_buildpack/blob/master/spec/hatchet/buildpack_spec.rb

An empty example of spec/hatchet/buildpack_spec.rb would look like this:

require_relative "../spec_helper.rb"

RSpec.describe "This buildpack" do
  it "accepts absolute paths at build and runtime" do
    # expect(true).to eq(true)
  end
end

Each it block represents a test case. If you ever get an error about no method expect it might be that you've forgotten to put your test case inside of a "describe" block.

  • expect syntax

Once inside of a test, you can assert an expected value against an actual value:

value = true
expect(value).to eq(true)

This might look like a weird syntax, but it's valid ruby. It's shorthand for this:

expect(value).to(eq(true))

Where eq is a method.

If you want to assert the opposite, you can use to_not:

expect(value).to_not eq(false)
  • matcher syntax

In the above example, the eq is called a "matcher". You're matching it against an object. In this case, you're looking for equality ==.

There are other matchers: https://relishapp.com/rspec/rspec-expectations/v/3-2/docs/built-in-matchers

expect(value).to be_truthy

value = "hello there"
expect(value).to include("there")

Rspec uses some "magic" to convert anything you pass to

Since most values in Hatchet are strings, the ones I use the most are:

Generally, I use the include when I know the exact value I want to assert against, I use match when there are dynamic values, and I want to be able to use a regular expression.

For building regular expressions, I like to use the tool https://rubular.com/ for developing and testing regular expressions. Ruby's regular expression engine is mighty.

  • Keep it simple

Rspec is a massive library with a host of features. It's possible to quickly make your tests unmaintainable and unreadable in the efforts to keep your code DRY. I recommend sticking to only the features mentioned here at first before trying to do anything fancy.

  • What to test

Here's a PR with a description of several standard failure modes that lots of buildpacks should be aware of and reference implementations:

heroku/heroku-buildpack-python#969

  • before(:all) gotcha

In rspec you can use before blocks to execute before a test, and after blocks to execute after a test. This might sound like you can deploy a hatchet app once and then write multiple tests against that app. However if before(:all) can be executed N times if you're running via parallel processes. Example:

# Warning running `before(:all)` in a multi-process test runner context likely executes your
# block N times where N is the number of tests in that context: https://github.com/grosser/parallel_split_test/pull/22/files
before(:all) do
  @app = Hatchet::Runner.new("default_ruby") # Warning: This is a gotcha
  @app.deploy
end

after(:all) do
  @app.teardown! if @app # Warning: This is a gotcha
end

it "tests app somehow" do
  expect(@app.run("ruby -v")).to match("ruby") # Warning: This is a gotcha
end


it "tests app somehow 2" do
  expect(@app.run("ls")).to match("Gemfile") # Warning: This is a gotcha
end

Running this via the parallel_split_test gem will cause the before(:all) block to be invoked multiple times:

$ PARALLEL_SPLIT_TEST_PROCESSES=3 bundle exec parallel_split_test spec/
Hatchet setup: "hatchet-t-af7dffc006"
Hatchet setup: "hatchet-t-bf7dffc006"

It would result in 2 apps being deployed. You can find more information on the documentation. For clarity of what will happen behind the scenes when running with multiple processes, it's recommended to use before(:each) instead of before(:all).

Basic Ruby

If you're not a Ruby specialist, not to worry. Here are a few things you might want to do:

  • Write a file and manipulate disk
File.open("facts.txt", "w+") do |f|
  f.write("equal does not mean equitable")
end

The first argument is the file name, and the second is the object "mode", here "w+" means open for writing and create the file if it doesn't exist. If you want to append to a file instead you can use the mode "a".

The file name can be a relative or absolute path. My personal favorite though is using the Pathname class to represent files on disk ruby Pathname api docs. You can also use a pathname object to write and manipulate the disk directly:

require 'pathname'
Pathname.new("facts.txt").write("equal does not mean equitable")

You can define a multi-line string in Ruby using <<~EOM with a closing EOM. Technically, EOM can be any string, but you're not here for technicalities.

File.open("bin/yarn", "w") do |f|
  f.write <<~EOM
    #! /usr/bin/env bash

    echo "Called bin/yarn binstub"
    `yarn install`
  EOM
end

This version of heredoc will strip out indentation:

puts <<~EOM
           # Notice that the spaces are stripped out of the front of this string
EOM
# => "# Notice that the spaces are stripped out of the front of this string"

The ~ Is usually the operator for a heredoc that you want, it's supported in Ruby 2.5+.

  • Hashes

A hash is like a dict in python. Docs: https://ruby-doc.org/core-2.7.1/Hash.html

person_hash = { "name" => "schneems", "level" => 6 }
puts person_hash["name"]
# => "schneems"

You can also mutate a hash:

person_hash = { "name" => "schneems", "level" => 6 }
person_hash["name"] = "Richard"
puts person_hash["name"]
# => "Richard"

You can inspect full objects by calling inspect on them:

puts person_hash.inspect
# => {"name"=>"schneems", "level"=>6}

As an implementation detail note that hashes are ordered

  • ENV

You can access the current processes' environment variables as a hash using the ENV object:

ENV["MY_CUSTOM_ENV_VAR"] = "blm"
puts `echo $MY_CUSTOM_ENV_VAR`.upcase
# => BLM

All values in an env var must be a string. See the Hash docs for more information on manipulating hashes https://ruby-doc.org/core-2.7.1/Hash.html. Also see the current ENV docs https://ruby-doc.org/core-2.7.1/ENV.html.

  • Strings versus symbols

In Ruby you can have a define a symbol :thing as well as a "string". They look and behave very closely but are different. A symbol is a singleton object, while the string is unique object. One really confusing thing is you can have a hash with both string and symbol keys:

my_hash = {}
my_hash["dog"] = "cinco"
my_hash[:dog] = "river"
puts my_hash.inspect
# => {"dog"=>"cinco", :dog=>"river"}
  • Blocks, procs, and lambdas

Blocks are a concept in Ruby for closure. Depending on how it's used it can be an anonymous method. It's always a method for passing around code. When you see do |app| that's the beginning of an implicit block. In addition to an implicit block you can create an explicit block using lambdas and procs. In Hatchet, these are most likely to be used to update the app before_deploy. Here's an example of some syntax for creating various blocks.

before_deploy = -> { FileUtils.touch("foo.txt") } # This syntax is called a "stabby lambda"
before_deploy = lambda { FileUtils.touch("foo.txt") } # This is a more verbose lambda
before_deploy = lambda do
  FileUtils.touch("foo.txt") # Multi-line lambda
end
before_deploy = Proc.new { FileUtils.touch("foo.txt") } # A proc and lambda are subtly different, it mostly won't matter to you though
before_deploy = Proc.new do
  FileUtils.touch("foo.txt") # Multi-line proc
end

All of these things do the same thing more-or-less. You can execute a block/proc/lambda by running:

before_deploy.call
  • Parens

You might have noticed that some ruby methods use parens and some don't. I.e. puts "yo" versus puts("yo"). If the parser can determine your intent then you don't have to use parens.

  • Debugging

If you're not used to debugging Ruby you can reference the Ruby debugging magic cheat sheet. The Ruby language is very powerful in it's ability to reflect on itself. Essentially the Ruby code is able to introspect itself to tell you what it's doing. If you're ever lost, ask your ruby code. It might confuse you, but it won't lie to you.

Another good debugging tool is the Pry debugger and repl.

  • Common Ruby errors
SyntaxError ((irb):14: syntax error, unexpected `end')

If you see this, it likely means you forgot a do on a block, for example .deploy |app| instead of .deploy do |app|.

NoMethodError (undefined method `upcase' for nil:NilClass)

If you see this it means a variable you're using is nil unexpectedly. You'll need to use the above debugging techniques to figure out why.

  • More

Ruby is full of multitudes, this isn't even close to being exhaustive, just enough to make you dangerous and write a few tests. It's infinitely useful for testing, writing CLIs and web apps.

Hatchet CLI

Hatchet has a CLI for installing and maintaining external repos you're using to test against. If you have Hatchet installed as a gem run

$ hatchet --help

For more info on commands. If you're using the source code you can run the command by going to the source code directory and running:

$ ./bin/hatchet --help

Developing Hatchet

If you want to add a feature to Hatchet (this library) you'll need to install it locally and be able to run the tests:

Install locally

$ git clone https://github.com/heroku/hatchet
$ cd hatchet
$ bundle install

Run the Tests

$ PARALLEL_SPLIT_TEST_PROCESSES=10 bundle exec parallel_split_test spec/

This will execute all tests, you can also run a single test by specifying a file and line number:

$ bundle exec rspec spec/hatchet/app_spec.rb:4

License

MIT