NoMethodError: undefined method `run_list_for' when testing role with ChefSpec

Question

I'm trying to test a role with ChefSpec. I would rather not use Chef Zero (by requiring 'chefspec/server') just because it runs a bit slower than ChefSpec does on it's own.

Perhaps I'm reading the documentation wrong, but it doesn't look like Chef Zero is required to test a role. I haven't had any luck with my current configuration, however. This is my test:

require 'chefspec'

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.cookbook_path = 'C:\projects\chef\cookbooks'
  config.role_path = 'C:\projects\chef\roles'
  config.log_level = :debug
  config.platform = 'ubuntu'
  config.version = '12.04'
end

describe 'my_cookbook::default' do
  let(:chef_run) do
    ChefSpec::Runner.new.converge('role[my_role]')
  end

  it 'runs without failing' do
    expect(chef_run)
  end
end

The role (located at roles/my_role.json):

{
    "name": "my_role",
    "description": "My role",
    "default_attributes": {
    },
    "run_list": [
        "recipe[my_cookbook::default]"
    ]
}

When I run the test, I receive:

NoMethodError: undefined method `run_list_for' for #<Hash:0x4fa3280>
./spec/role_spec.rb:13:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'
./spec/role_spec.rb:17:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'

If I modify my test to manually load the role into Chef Zero by requiring chefspec/server, that seems to work. I don't think I should have to mock the server from the way the documentation is written, but I could be wrong.

Am I doing something wrong? Is this a bug? Or do I have to use Chef Zero?

Answer 1

If you are using JSON roles, you must include the json_class:

"json_class": "Chef::Role"

If you are using Ruby roles, you don't need to do that.