Puppet Check

Description
Usage
- CLI
- Rake
- Docker
- Vagrant
- Exit Codes
- Optional Dependencies
Contributing

Description

Puppet Check is a gem that provides a comprehensive, streamlined, and efficient analysis of the syntax, style, and validity of your entire Puppet code and data.

Former Method for Code and Data Checks

Old

Puppet Check Method for Code and Data Checks

New

Example Output

The following files have errors:
-- manifests/syntax.pp:
This Variable has no effect. A value was produced and then forgotten (one or more preceding expressions may have the wrong form) at 1:1
Illegal variable name, The given name '' does not conform to the naming rule /^((::)?[a-z]\w*)*((::)?[a-z_]\w*)$/ at 1:1
Found 2 errors. Giving up

-- templates/syntax.epp:
This Name has no effect. A value was produced and then forgotten (one or more preceding expressions may have the wrong form) at 2:4

-- lib/syntax.rb:
(eval):1: syntax error, unexpected =>, expecting end-of-input
BEGIN {throw :good}; i => am : a '' ruby.file { with } &bad syntax
                         ^

-- templates/syntax.erb:
(erb):1: syntax error, unexpected tIDENTIFIER, expecting ')'
... am "; _erbout.concat(( @a ruby ).to_s); _erbout.concat " te...
...                               ^

-- hieradata/syntax.yaml:
block sequence entries are not allowed in this context at line 2 column 4

-- hieradata/syntax.json:
757: unexpected token at '{

-- metadata_syntax/metadata.json:
Required field 'version' not found in metadata.json.
Duplicate dependencies on puppetlabs/nothing.
Deprecated field 'checksum' found.
Summary exceeds 144 characters.

-- librarian_syntax/Puppetfile:
(eval):3: syntax error, unexpected ':', expecting end-of-input
    librarian: 'puppet'
              ^

The following files have warnings:
-- manifests/style_lint.pp:
double quoted string containing no variables at line 2, column 8
indentation of => is not properly aligned at line 2, column 5

-- manifests/style_parser.pp:
Unrecognized escape sequence '\[' at 2:77
Unrecognized escape sequence '\]' at 2:77
double quoted string containing no variables at line 2, column 45

-- lib/style.rb:
1:1: W: Useless assignment to variable - `hash`.
1:10: C: Use the new Ruby 1.9 hash syntax.
2:1: C: Do not introduce global variables.
3:6: C: Prefer single-quoted strings when you don't need string interpolation or special symbols.
[7]:Attribute: Issue#foobarbaz is a writable attribute [https://github.com/troessner/reek/blob/master/docs/Attribute.md]
[6]:IrresponsibleModule: Issue has no descriptive comment [https://github.com/troessner/reek/blob/master/docs/Irresponsible-Module.md]

-- templates/style.erb:
3: already initialized constant TEMPLATE
2: previous definition of TEMPLATE was here

-- hieradata/style.yaml:
Value(s) missing in key 'value'.
Value(s) missing in key 'and'.

-- metadata_style/metadata.json:
License identifier 'Imaginary' is not in the SPDX list: http://spdx.org/licenses/

-- librarian_style/Puppetfile:
2:3: C: Align the parameters of a method call if they span more than one line.
5:13: C: Use the new Ruby 1.9 hash syntax.

The following files have no errors or warnings:
-- manifests/good.pp
-- templates/good.epp
-- lib/good.rb
-- templates/good.erb
-- hieradata/good.yaml
-- hieradata/good.json
-- metadata_good/metadata.json
-- librarian_good/Puppetfile

The following files have unrecognized formats and therefore were not processed:
-- foobarbaz

Why not Puppetlabs Spec Helper?

Puppetlabs Spec Helper is focused more on advanced and robust spec testing. Puppet Check is focused more on efficient and comprehensive Puppet code and data validation.
Puppetlabs Spec Helper performs fewer types of checks.
Puppetlabs Spec Helper has extra layers of gems in between it and the gems executing the checks.
Puppetlabs Spec Helper does not allow interfacing through it to the gems executing the checks.
Puppetlabs Spec Helper has no CLI.
Puppetlabs Spec Helper intrinsically only executes spec tests against one module at a time.
Puppetlabs Spec Helper requires an additional config file for RSpec Puppet support.
Puppetlabs Spec Helper does not update external module dependencies in a stateful/persistent workspace and fails gracefully instead.
Puppetlabs Spec Helper requires extra configuration items to setup self-module RSpec testing.

It is worth nothing that there is no current development objective for Puppet Check to achieve the same advanced level of robustness for spec testing that Puppetlabs Spec Helper enables. If you are performing standard spec testing on your Puppet code and data, then Puppet Check's spec testing is a fantastic lightweight and faster alternative to Puppetlabs Spec Helper. If you require advanced and intricate capabilities in your spec testing (e.g. direct interfacing to the Puppet::Parser::Scope API), then you will likely prefer Puppetlabs Spec Helper's spec testing in conjunction with Puppet Check's file validation.

Usage

Puppet Check requires ruby >= 2.0.0, puppet >= 3.4, and puppet-lint >= 2.0.0. All other dependencies should be fine with various versions. Puppet Check can be used either with a CLI or Rake tasks. Please note both interfaces will ignore any directories named fixtures or specified paths with that directory during file checks and spec tests.

Reek

Reek dropped support for Ruby 2.0 when it went to 4.0. Since dependencies by Ruby version are allowed in Gemfiles but not gemspecs, this means that PuppetCheck installed with bundler will automatically pick up the correct version of Reek for your Ruby version and install it. If you are installing PuppetCheck via gem, then you can install reek normally with gem with Ruby >= 2.1, but you will need to specify gem install reek -v 3.11 if you are using Ruby 2.0.

Important Note for Ruby 1.9.3 and PuppetCheck <= 1.2.1

If you are using Ruby 1.9.3 (and therefore also PuppetCheck <= 1.2.1), there is an issue where Hiera <= 3.2.0 has an unspecified version dependency on JSonPure. Since JSonPure 2.0.2 requires ruby >= 2.0.0, this breaks Hiera installs on Ruby 1.9.3, which breaks Puppet installs, which breaks PuppetCheck installs. Therefore, you will need to either restrict your installed version of JSonPure to something lower than 2.0.2 if you are using Ruby 1.9.3, or use Hiera >= 3.2.1.

CLI

usage: puppet-check [options] paths
    -f, --future                     Enable future parser
    -s, --style                      Enable style checks
    -o, --output format              Format for results output (default is text): text, json, or yaml
        --puppet-lint arg_one,arg_two
                                     Arguments for PuppetLint ignored checks
    -c, --config file                Load PuppetLint options from file.
        --rubocop arg_one,arg_two    Arguments for Rubocop disabled cops

The command line interface enables the ability to select the Puppet future parser, additional style checks besides the syntax checks, and to specify PuppetLint and Rubocop checks to ignore. If you require a more robust interface to PuppetLint, Rubocop, and Reek, then please use .puppet-lint.rc, .rubocop.yml and *.reek config files. The .puppet-lint.rc can be specified with the -c argument. If it is not specified, then PuppetLint will automatically load one from .puppet-lint.rc, ~/.puppet-lint.rc, or /etc/puppet-lint.rc, in that order of preference. The nearest .rubocop.yml and *.reek will be automatically respected.

Example:

puppet-check -s --puppet-lint no-hard_tabs-check,no-140chars-check --rubocop Metrics/LineLength,Style/Encoding -o yaml path/to/code_and_data

Rake

Interfacing with Puppet-Check via rake requires a require puppet-check/tasks in your Rakefile. This generates the following rake commands:

rake puppetcheck           # Execute all Puppet-Check checks
rake puppetcheck:file      # Execute Puppet-Check file checks
rake puppetcheck:spec      # Execute RSpec and RSpec-Puppet tests
rake puppetcheck:beaker    # Execute Beaker acceptance tests

puppetcheck:file

You can add style checks to and select the future parser for the rake puppetcheck:file, or change the output format, by adding the following after the require:

PuppetCheck.style_check = true
PuppetCheck.future_parser = true
PuppetCheck.output_format = 'yaml'

Please note that rspec does not support yaml output and therefore would still use the default 'progress' formatter even if yaml is specified as the format option to Puppet Check.

The style checks from within rake puppetcheck:file are directly interfaced to puppet-lint, rubocop, and reek. This means that all arguments and options should be specified from within your .puppet-lint.rc, .rubocop.yml, and *.reek. The capability to pass style arguments and options from within the Rakefile task block will be considered for future versions.

puppetcheck:spec

The spec tests will be executed against everything that matches the pattern **/{classes, defines, facter, functions, hosts, puppet, unit, types}/**/*_spec.rb. Any of these directories inside of a fixtures directory will be ignored. This means everything in the current path that appears to be a Puppet module spec test for your module (not dependencies) will be regarded as such and executed during this rake task.

Please note it is perfectly acceptable to only execute standard RSpec tests in your modules and not use the extended RSpec Puppet matchers. If no Puppet module directories are identified during directory parsing, then no RSpec Puppet related actions (including those described below) will be performed.

Prior to executing the spec tests, Puppet Check will parse everything in the current path and identify all spec directories not within fixtures directories. It will then execute RSpec Puppet setup actions inside all directories one level above that contain a manifests directory. This is assumed to be a Puppet module directory. These setup actions include creating all of the necessary directories inside of spec/fixtures, creating a blank site.pp if it is missing, symlinking everything from the module that is needed into fixtures (automatically replaces functionality of self module symlink in .fixtures.yaml from Puppetlabs Spec Helper), and creates the spec_helper.rb if it is missing. Note these setup actions can replace rspec-puppet-init from RSpec Puppet and currently are both faster and more accurate.

Puppet Check will also automatically download specified external module dependencies for and during RSpec Puppet testing. Currently git, puppet forge, and hg commands are supported. They can be implemented in the following way in your modules' metadata.json:

"dependencies": [
  {
    "name": "module-name",
    "forge": "forge-name",
    "args": "puppet module install optional-arguments"
  },
  {
    "name": "module-name",
    "git": "git-url",
    "args": "git clone optional-arguments"
  },
  {
    "name": "module-name",
    "hg": "hg-url",
    "args": "hg clone optional-arguments"
  }
]

Example:

"dependencies": [
  {
    "name": "puppetlabs/stdlib",
    "forge": "puppetlabs-stdlib",
    "args": "--do-something-cool"
  },
  {
    "name": "puppetlabs/lvm",
    "git": "https://github.com/puppetlabs/puppetlabs-lvm.git"
  }
]

Note that args will be ignored during git pull and hg pull/hg update when the modules are updated instead of freshly cloned.

puppetcheck:beaker

The spec tests will be executed against everything that matches the pattern **/acceptance. Any of these directories inside of a fixtures directory will be ignored. This means everything in the current path that appears to be a Puppet module acceptance test for your module (not dependencies) will be regarded as such and executed during this rake task.

Please note this is merely a frontend to Beaker and that Beaker itself has a self-contained scope compared to all the other tools Puppet Check interfaces with and utilizes. This means if you want to add Beaker-RSpec, Serverspec, etc., or perform advanced configurations, those would be all be performed within Beaker itself. This task merely provides an interface to integrate Beaker in with your other testing infrastructure.

Docker

You can also use Puppet Check inside of Docker for quick, portable, and disposable testing. Below is an example Dockerfile for this purpose:

# a reliable and small container at the moment
FROM ubuntu:16.04
# you need ruby and any other extra dependencies that come from packages; in this example we install git to use it for downloading external module dependencies
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install ruby git -y
# you need puppet-check and any other extra dependencies that come from gems; in this example we install reek because the ruby ABI is 2.3 and then rspec-puppet and rake for extra testing
RUN gem install --no-rdoc --no-ri puppet-check reek rspec-puppet rake
# this is needed for the ruby json parser to not flip out on fresh os installs for some reason (change encoding value as necessary)
ENV LANG en_US.UTF-8
# create the directory for your module, directory environment, etc. and change directory into it
WORKDIR /module_name_or_directory_environment_name
# copy the module, directory environment, etc. contents into the module directory inside the container
COPY / .
# execute your tests; in this example we are executing the full suite of tests
ENTRYPOINT ["rake", "puppetcheck"]

You can also build your own general container for testing various Puppet situations by removing the last three lines. You can then test each module, directory environment, etc. on top of that container by merely adding and modifying the final three lines to a Dockerfile that uses the container you built from the first four lines. This is recommended usage due to being very efficient and stable.

Vagrant

As an alternative to Docker, you can also use Vagrant for quick and disposable testing, but it is not as portable as Docker for these testing purposes. Below is an example Vagrantfile for this purpose.

Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
  # a reliable and small box at the moment
  config.vm.box = 'fedora/23'

  config.vm.provision 'shell', inline: <<-SHELL
    # cd to 'sync' if this is recent Vagrant; cd to '/vagrant' if this is older Vagrant
    cd sync || cd /vagrant
    # you need ruby and any other extra dependencies that come from packages; in this example we install git to use it for downloading external module dependencies
    sudo dnf install ruby rubygems git -y
    # you need puppet-check and any other extra dependencies that come from gems; in this example we install reek because the ruby ABI is 2.2 and then rspec-puppet and rake for extra testing
    sudo gem install --no-rdoc --no-ri puppet-check reek rspec-puppet rake
    # this is needed for the ruby json parser to not flip out on fresh os installs for some reason (change encoding value as necessary)
    export LANG='en_US.UTF-8'
    # execute your tests; in this example we are executing the full suite of tests
    rake puppetcheck
  SHELL
end

To overcome the lack of convenient portability, you could try spinning up the Vagrant instance at the top level of your Puppet code and data and then descend into directories to execute tests as necessary. Cleverness or patience will be necessary if you decide to use Vagrant for testing and desire portability.

Exit Codes

0: PuppetCheck exited with no internal exceptions or errors in your Puppet code and data.
1: PuppetCheck exited with an internal exception (takes preference over other non-zero exit codes) or failed spec test.
2: PuppetCheck exited with one or more errors in your Puppet code and data.

Optional dependencies

rake: install this if you want to use Puppet Check with rake tasks in addition to the CLI.
rspec: install this if you want to use Puppet Check to execute the spec tests for your Ruby files during rake.
rspec-puppet: install this if you want to use Puppet Check to execute the spec tests for your Puppet files during rake.
beaker: install this if you want to use Puppet Check to execute the acceptance tests during rake.
git: install this if you want to use Puppet Check to download external module dependencies with git commands during RSpec Puppet testing.
mercurial: install this if you want to use Puppet Check to download external module dependencies with hg commands during RSpec Puppet testing.

Contributing

Code should pass all spec tests. New features should involve new spec tests. Adherence to Rubocop and Reek is expected where not overly onerous or where the check is of dubious cost/benefit.

A Dockerfile is provided for easy rake testing. A Vagrantfile is provided for easy gem building, installation, and post-installation testing.

Please consult the CHANGELOG for the current development roadmap.