test-kitchen: unable to use ENV variable in .kitchen.yml on Windows - windows

Question

It appears I'm unable to use erb in the .kitchen.yml when using the ENV var on Windows platforms.
$ kitchen list
>>>>>> ------Exception-------
>>>>>> Class: Kitchen::UserError
>>>>>> Message: Error parsing C:/Users/anonymous/.kitchen.yml as YAML.
Please run `kitchen diagnose --no-instances --loader' to help debug your issue.
>>>>>> ----------------------
>>>>>> Please see .kitchen/logs/kitchen.log for more details
>>>>>> Also try running `kitchen diagnose --all` for configuration
.kitchen.yml
---
driver:
name: vagrant
synced_folders:
- [<%= ENV['PWD'] %>, '/tmp/foo']
provisioner:
name: chef_zero
platforms:
- name: ubuntu-16.04
suites:
- name: default
ENV
$ chef -v
Chef Development Kit Version: 2.4.17
chef-client version: 13.6.4
delivery version: master (73ebb72a6c42b3d2ff5370c476be800fee7e5427)
berks version: 6.3.1
kitchen version: 1.19.2
inspec version: 1.45.13
This works fine on my Ubuntu 16.04 machine, using the same file and software versions.
I believe this is related to a similar issue reported on the cucumber/aruba project ~ https://github.com/cucumber/aruba/issues/291
I tried submitting a new issue to the test-kitchen project but they refer me to their contributing guidelines which just goes over a release process. Since I'm unable to submit a new issue I've come to SO hoping for either some clarity or a work around.

Answer 1

The problem is likely that after the Erb replacement, this would look like - [C:\Users\anonymous, '/tmp/foo']. The : in there is an important YAML syntax character. The simple solution would be - ["<%= ENV['PWD'] %>", '/tmp/foo'] or - [<%= ENV['PWD'].to_json %>, '/tmp/foo'] (JSON is a subset of YAML).