Getting the version variable as a output in InSpec Report

Question

I am using chef inspc to verify the the AMI Images created using packer to fit out standards. One of the requirement is checking the version difference between AMI images.

I have the following code which checks for ansible version 2.8.

control 'Ansible check' do
  impact 1.0
  title 'Check anisble is installed'
    describe package('ansible') do
      it { should be_installed }
      its('version') { should match (/2.8.*/) }
    end
end

However I need to get the full version variable to check difference between AMIs. Ex 2.8.8

Is there a way to get the version variable outputted in the inspec report function or do I have to use another tools to do this?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Using this post https://discourse.chef.io/t/customise-testing-report/11722/4, I setuped a simple hack to write the version to a another text file using ruby.

Below is my code.

f = File.open('versions.txt', 'a')

control 'Ansible check' do
  impact 1.0
  title 'Check anisble is installed'
    describe package('ansible') do
      it { should be_installed }
      its('version') { should match (/2.8.*/) }
      f.write("ansible : ", packages('ansible').versions[0], "\n")
    end
end

The version file output as below

# cat versions.txt
ansible : 2.8.10+dfsg-1