puppet-syntax

Puppet::Syntax

Puppet::Syntax checks for correct syntax in Puppet manifests, templates, and Hiera YAML.

Version support

Puppet::Syntax is supported with:

• Puppet >= 5.0 that provides the validate face.
• Ruby >= 2.4

For the specific versions that we test against, see the GitHub Actions workflow.

Installation

To install Puppet::Syntax, either add it to your module's Gemfile or install the gem manually.

• To install with the Gemfile, add:

gem 'puppet-syntax'

And then execute:

bundle install

• To install the gem yourself, run:

gem install puppet-syntax

Configuration

To configure Puppet::Syntax, add any of the following settings to your Rakefile.

• To exclude certain paths from the syntax checks, set:

PuppetSyntax.exclude_paths = ["vendor/**/*"]

• To configure specific paths for the Hiera syntax check, specify hieradata_paths. This is useful if you use Hiera data inside your module.

PuppetSyntax.hieradata_paths = ["**/data/**/*.yaml", "hieradata/**/*.yaml", "hiera*.yaml"]

• To configure specific paths for the Puppet syntax checks or for the templates checks, specify manifests_paths or templates_paths respectively. This is useful if you want to check specific paths only.

PuppetSyntax.manifests_paths = ["**/environments/future/*.pp"]
PuppetSyntax.templates_paths = ["**/modules/**/templates/*.erb"]

• To ignore deprecation warnings, disable fail_on_deprecation_notices. By default, puppet-syntax fails if it encounters Puppet deprecation notices. If you are working with a legacy code base and want to ignore such non-fatal warnings, you might want to override the default behavior.

PuppetSyntax.fail_on_deprecation_notices = false

• To enable a syntax check on Hiera keys, set:

PuppetSyntax.check_hiera_keys = true

This reports common mistakes in key names in Hiera files, such as:

• Leading :: in keys, such as: ::notsotypical::warning2: true.
• Single colon scope separators, such as: :picky::warning5: true.
• Invalid camel casing, such as: noCamelCase::warning3: true.
• Use of hyphens, such as: no-hyphens::warning4: true.

Usage

• To enable Puppet::Syntax, include the following in your module's Rakefile:

require 'puppet-syntax/tasks/puppet-syntax'

For Continuous Integration, use Puppet::Syntax in conjunction with puppet-lint and spec tests. Add the following to your module's Rakefile:

task :test => [
  :syntax,
  :lint,
  :spec,
]

• To test all manifests and templates, relative to the location of the Rakefile, run:

$ bundle exec rake syntax
---> syntax:manifests
---> syntax:templates
---> syntax:hiera:yaml

• To return a non-zero exit code and an error message on any failures, run:

$ bundle exec rake syntax
---> syntax:manifests
rake aborted!
Could not parse for environment production: Syntax error at end of file at demo.pp:2
Tasks: TOP => syntax => syntax:manifests
(See full trace by running task with --trace)

Checks

Puppet::Syntax makes the following checks in the directories and subdirectories of the module, relative to the location of the Rakefile.

Hiera

Checks .yaml files for syntax errors.

By default, this rake task looks for all .yaml files in a single module under:

• **/data/**/*.yaml
• hieradata/**/*.yaml
• hiera*.yaml

manifests

Checks all .pp files in the module for syntax errors.

templates

erb

Checks .erb files in the module for syntax errors.

epp

Checks .epp files in the module for syntax errors.

EPP checks are supported in Puppet 4 or greater, or in Puppet 3 with the future parser enabled.

Contributing

1. Fork the repo.
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature).
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature').
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature).
5. Create new Pull Request.

Making a new Release

• Update version in lib/puppet-syntax/version.rb
• Run the changelog rake task (bundle exec rake changelog)
• Create a PR
• Get it reviewed and merged
• update the local repo, create a signed git tag, prefixed with a v, matching the new version (git tag -s v1.2.3)
• GitHub action will publish to GitHub Packages and Rubygems