How to avoid deprecation warning for stub_chain in RSpec 3.0?

In order to get rid of the warning with your code as-is, you'll have to explicitly enable the should syntax in your config:

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.expect_with :rspec do |c|
    c.syntax = [:should, :expect]
  end
end

The replacement syntax for stub_chain is:

allow(object).to receive_message_chain(:one, :two, :three).and_return(:four)
expect(object.one.two.three).to eq(:four)

More information about this and its usage in:

• The pull request in rspec-mocks
• The feature examples in rspec-mocks

As of this writing, the change to receive_message_chain will be included in the 3.0.0.beta2 release of rspec-mocks (see the Changelog). If you want it right now, you'll have to live on the bleeding edge and add the specific commit reference in your Gemfile to get receive_message_chain working:

gem 'rspec-mocks', github: 'rspec/rspec-mocks', ref: '4662eb0'

Unfortunately, that doesn't actually answer your question about getting rid of the deprecation message, which I was unable to do, even with the pre-release version of rspec-mocks and
c.syntax = [:should, :expect] set explicitly in my RSpec config.

So, I would say your options are to either wait until 3.0.0.beta2 is released and see if the deprecation notices get fixed with your existing code at that time, or bring in the very latest changes and change your syntax to receive_message_chain.

See Myron's answer for the actual solution.

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.mock_with :rspec do |c|
    c.syntax = [:should, :expect]
  end
end

Notice that it's setting the rspec-mocks syntax, not the rspec-expectations syntax, as Paul's answer shows.

Here's a solution that worked for me - I'm using Rails 4.1.7 :

Inside spec/spec_helpber.rb, set rspec-expectations’ and/or rspec-mocks’ syntax as following:

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.mock_with :rspec do |mocks|
    mocks.syntax = [:should, :expect]
  end
  config.expect_with :rspec do |expectations|
    expectations.syntax = [:should, :expect]
  end
end

Hope this helps someone else :)