document only_if for controls

[chris-rock]

Description

With #619 we introduced only_if for controls, but we have not documented it yet.

control 'hello' do
  only_if { os[:family] != 'arch' }
  describe 1 do
    it { should eq 2 }
  end
end

InSpec and Platform Version

0.22.0

Aha! Link: https://chef.aha.io/features/SH-2193

[nvtkaszpir]

+1

[Zeerg]

Any update on this?

[avishefi]

I think this is already documented: https://www.inspec.io/docs/reference/dsl_inspec/#exclude-specific-test

[walterdolce]

Is there any chance when someone types only_if in the website's search bar the comment above (and/or any additional piece of documentation related to this) could appear as a search result?

[calebwhitt]

@walterdolce sounds like a great idea. This is still not the case, and I only found https://www.inspec.io/docs/reference/dsl_inspec/#exclude-specific-test because I remembered where I'd seen a mention of only_if before in the docs. Are there any updates on this? I feel the current documentation for only_if isn't extensive enough.

[rdonkin]

I agree that the documentation is not complete for only_if - from reading https://www.inspec.io/docs/reference/dsl_inspec/#exclude-specific-test it's not clear whether this applies to the whole control clause, or is tied to the next describe only.

It would also be good to have documented somewhere how this differs from using skip if ...:

    before do
      skip if some_condition
    end

Examples like in that page are great, but deeper docs are also needed for reference - Ansible and Terraform are reasonable examples here.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. We value your input and contribution. Please leave a comment if this issue still affects you.

[walterdolce]

Here's some activity 😉

[james-stocks]

A couple of points worth documenting:

• it applies to the control (maybe document what happens if an only_if is attempted outside of a control block)
• Only one is allowed per control, but you can && multiple conditions
• it results in a skip and not a pass - it should not be used where the "only if" condition means that the system-under-test is compliant.