This is the documentation of changes in Serverspec/Specinfra v2.

Changes of version 2

RSpec 3 support

Serverspec v2 supports RSpec 3 and does not support RSpec 2 any more.

SpecInfra renamed to Specinfra

SpecInfra, the base library of Serverspec, has been renamed to Specinfra.

Backward Compatibility

Almost all of the Serverspec test code you wrote for v1 should work with v2, but some matchers don’t work.

Backward Incompatibility

Obsoleted matchers

match_md5checksum, match_sha256checksum, return_stdout, return_stderr, return_exit_status matchers are obsoleted

You can’t write test code like this anymore.

describe command('ls /tmp') do
  it { should return_stdout 'foo' }
  it { should return_stderr 'bar' }
  it { should return_exit_status 0 }
end

describe file('/etc/services') do
  it { should match_md5checksum('fdcb69b5c0e9beb7d392fbc458bc6beb')
  it { should match_sha256sum('17feb8dc0817056a963c2861052d670b642c61f5625fae1fd59a2022be1dbb5b') }
end

Instead, you must write test code like this.

describe command('ls /tmp') do
  its(:stdout) { should eq "foo\n" }
  its(:stderr) { should match /bar/ }
  its(:exit_status) { should eq 0 }
end

describe file('/etc/services') do
  its(:md5sum)    { should eq 'fdcb69b5c0e9beb7d392fbc458bc6beb' }
  its(:sha256sum) { should eq '17feb8dc0817056a963c2861052d670b642c61f5625fae1fd59a2022be1dbb5b' }
end

spec_helper.rb incompatible

spec_helper.rb does not have backward compatibility. So you should re-generate spec_helper.rb by serverspec-init and check it.

Backend helper and DetectOS helper have been removed

In version 1, you need to include SpecInfra::Helper::_backend_type_ SpecInfra::Helper::DetectOS to detect the os of target hosts like this.

require 'serverspec'
include SpecInfra::Helper::Ssh
include SpecInfra::Helper::DetectOS

In version 2, you can specify backend type with set :backend, :type and auto detection is default behavior, so don’t include SpecInfra::Helper::_backend_type_ and Specinfra::Helper::DetectOS.

require 'serverspec'
# Set backend type
set :backend, :ssh
# Don't include Specinfra::Helper::DetectOS

sudo_prompt has been removed

Specinfra sets prompt internally by -p option of sudo command now. So we don’t need set sudo_prompt by RSpec.configure or Specinfra.configuration.

os helper command behavior

The helper command os which returns OS infomation of target hosts has been changed in two point.

• Return OS family in small letters
• Return release number correctly

In v1, os command returns OS information like this.

irb(main):004:0> os
=> {:family=>"FreeBSD10", :release=>nil, :arch=>"x86_64"}

In v2, os command returns OS information like this.

irb(main):004:0> os
=> {:family=>"freebsd", :release=>"10", :arch=>"x86_64"}

PATH environment variable setting

In v1, $PATH is appended to your path configuration automatically, so you set paths excluding $PATH like this.

RSpec.configure do |c|
  c.path = '/sbin:/usr/local/sbin'
end

# Or

Specinfra.configuration.path = '/sbin:/usr/local/sbin'

In v2, you must set $PATH in path configuration.

set :path, '/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH'

(This is the syntax sugar of Specinfra.configuration. I will explain it later.)

Thanks to this change, you can change the path order like this.

set :path, '$PATH:/sbin:/usr/local/sbin'

New features

Syntax sugar of Specinfra.configuration

In v1, you can set configuration parameters and values like this.

# Through RSpec.configure
RSpec.configure |c|
  c.host = 'target-host-name'
end

# Or call Specinfra.configuration directly
Specinfra.configuration.host = 'target-host-name'

In v2, you can set configuration parameters and values like this.

set :host, 'target-host-name'

SSH settings

In v1, you must create Net::SSH object by yourself and set to c.ssh like this.

RSpec.configure do |c|
  c.ssh = Net::SSH.start('host.example.jp', 'user', :port => 2222)
end

In v2, you can set SSH settings like this.

set :host, 'host.example.jp'
set :ssh_options, :user => 'user', :port => 2222

Environment Variables

You can set any environment variables like this.

set :env, :LANG => 'C', :LC_MESSAGES => 'C'

Note: In the case of SSH, environment variables should be accepted by AcceptEnv directive of sshd_config.