Reuse the same test for multiple test suites in one cookbook

[ceilfors]

Generated from inspec/inspec#338
Depends on inspec/inspec#719

ServerSpec is supporting test reusability and customisability via shared_examples. An example from elasticsearch cookbook:

• Defining shared_examples_for for reuse in test suites
• Calling the shared_examples_for without arguments in test suite 1
• Calling the shared_examples_for with custom arguments to override the default values in test suite 2

[chris-rock]

@ceilfors We need to add attributes support into kitchen-inspec. Instead of having a separate attributes yml file, those should be defined in kitchen.yml

[chris-rock]

See inspec/inspec#719

[kbaltrinic]

+1 for this. We have lots of server cookbooks with an "active" and "standby" suite where 90% of the configuration and hence the tests for active vs standby servers is the same. So obviously we would like to use the same tests for both suites to cover that 90%. Similar situations for primary vs secondary servers in a cluster, etc.

[xmik]

For now we can use: https://github.com/chef/kitchen-inspec/blob/master/README.md#use-remote-inspec-profiles . E.g. keep test/integration/helpers directory, as previously with serverspec. Then, put all the common tests into test/integration/helpers/inspec/ and in .kitchen.yml use:

verifier:
  name: inspec
  sudo: true
  inspec_tests:
    - path: test/integration/helpers/inspec

This takes care, that in addition to running the tests for a current suite, tests from test/integration/helpers/inspec are run too (for each suite).

[adamleff]

kitchen-inspec now supports passing of attributes to the profiles, and inspec_tests can be configured per suite if needed. There are no currently plans to support the "shared examples" model. If there are use cases where you folks feel that's necessary, please log an issue on the chef/inspec project as that would be a feature of InSpec itself, not the kitchen verifier plugin. Thank you!