"uninitialized constant" on depend cookbook

Question

I have a guard that uses a helper library from one of my cookbook dependencies. When I create a stub for this call I receive the following error during the test run:

uninitialized constant Chef::Acme

Stub:

before(:each) do
  allow(Chef::Acme::Helper).to receive(:is_widget_requested?).and_return(true)
end

My dependencies are in my metadata file and I require the 'chefspec/berkshelf' gem in my spec_helper file.

What is the best way to handle this?

Answer 1

After further testing I found a better solution. As so brilliantly stated in 1972 by Butler Lampson:

"All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection"

I created a wrapper in the libraries folder of the cookbook I'm testing which simply calls the original library and then I can stub the library call. This type of abstraction is a common pattern in testing other platforms.

WRAPPER:

class Chef
    class Acme
        class HelperWrapper
            public
                def self.is_widget_requested?(node)
                    Chef::Acme::Helper.is_widget_requested?(node)
                end
        end unless defined?(HelperWrapper)
    end
 end

Not sure why but the unless defined? is required for this to work.

TEST:

before(:each) do
    allow(Chef::Acme::HelperWrapper).to receive(:is_widget_requested?).and_return(true)
end