Puppet repository moving from mocha to rspec-mocks

[Jacob Helwig]

Greetings!

Mocha is the mocking and stubbing framework that's been used by Puppet for many years now in its test suite (https://mocha.jamesmead.org/). For a while now, it has also been the source of a number of annoyances. There have been multiple issues around the mocks/stubs living beyond the lifetime of a single test, as well as general usability quirks that we've had to work around. For a while now we've wanted to replace mocha with something that does not exhibit as many lifetime issues, and generally fits more cleanly into the rspec ecosystem.

With the rapidly approaching finalization of several releases of puppet-agent, we're planning on landing the mocha removal in all active branches of the puppet repository (5.5.x, 6.0.x, and master) relatively shortly after we're certain that nothing else will need to land for any of the releases. As things stand right now, it's looking like we will land the changes early next week. We will adjust as needed to make sure things land after current set of releases that are underway, and to make sure we land the changes early in the week so that people are around to handle any issues that might come up.

Once the changes are in, any existing open PR will need to be updated to use rspec-mocks if it's using any of the mocha style mocking/stubbing (rspec-mocks docs can be found at https://relishapp.com/rspec/rspec-mocks/v/3-8/docs ). If you have an open Puppet PR using mocha's mocking & stubbing, and would like a hand updating it to rspec-mocks, feel free to ping @puppetlabs/team-coremunity in your PR, and we'll be happy to help.

-Jacob

Puppet Core Team

[Jacob Helwig]

The 5.5.x, 6.0.x, 6.4.x, and master branches all have been switched over to use rspec-mocks as of yesterday. We'll be going through any outstanding PRs to the Puppet repository to see what will need to be updated to no longer use mocha. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.