Re: [Fab-user] Testing strategies for fabfiles.

[Jeff Forcier]

On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 9:08 PM, address@hidden
<address@hidden> wrote:

> Unit testing/mocking things like this is more work than just whacking a real 
> server up, beating the heck out of it, and throwing it away when everything 
> passes.

Fabric itself actually has a fledgling fake SSH/SFTP server that I've
created as part of the 1.0 efforts, so that's also a possibility. It's
very basic right now, doesn't keep "real" OS state or anything like
that, but can do simple "when command X is seen, reply with Y stdout
or stderr strings" behavior.

I expect it'll get spun out into its own product at some point and
made easier to use outside of Fabric's own test suite. Obviously I'll
let everyone know if/when that happens. Until then it's pretty much
"use at your own peril" :)

Otherwise, I heartily endorse using Rackspace Cloud or AWS mini
(micro? nano? I can't remember) instances, as they'll provide a more
"real" platform, at the cost of extra network latency and potential
state bleed (two of the reasons I went the mock route myself).

Best,
Jeff

-- 
Jeff Forcier
Unix sysadmin; Python/Ruby engineer
http://bitprophet.org