Using Ruby & Thor For Easy Puppet Module Development
Tehmasp Chaudhri | @tehmaspc
What is Thor?
- Thor is a Ruby toolkit for building powerful command-line interfaces.
- The developer can easily integrate Thor into their Ruby code.
- Classes such as Groups, Actions, and Shell are provided which make tasks such as file system interaction and command line user dialogue easier.
- Thor can be leveraged to make custom project generators (e.g. 'bundle gem -b mygem')
More Info:
Why Did We Use Thor?
Technical Reasons:
- Thor is written in Ruby, our Puppet code is in a Ruby DSL.
- Thor's custom project generator use case was appealing and works well. It's easy to add and update template files.
- We wanted to create a framework for Puppet module development which provided the Puppet tools we like, so that we could create standalone & well tested Puppet modules. Thor let us glue all this together.
Business Reasons:
- We allow (many) dev teams to contribute to our Puppet module development; thus we needed a way to make creating Puppet modules quick & easy, consistent, manageable, and with 'best practices' baked in.
Tools We Like To Use With Puppet Module Development:
- puppet-lint
- puppet-git-hooks
- puppetlabs_spec_helper
- rspec-puppet
- serverspec
- vagrant
- bundler
- rake
- jenkins
Shoutout to Phil Zimmerman's Puppet Testing For The Win
Thor Custom Generator Example:
...
def write_emptydirs
empty_directory target.join('files')
empty_directory target.join('manifests')
empty_directory target.join('templates')
empty_directory target.join('spec')
empty_directory target.join('serverspec/spec')
empty_directory target.join('.vagrant_puppet')
end
def write_modulefile
template 'puppet/ModuleFile.erb', target.join('ModuleFile')
end
...
ModuleFile.erb Example:
name '<%= module_name %>'
version '0.1.0'
source 'UNKNOWN'
author '<%= maintainer_email %>'
license '<%= license_name %>'
summary 'UNKNOWN'
description 'UNKNOWN'
project_page 'UNKNOWN'
## Add dependencies, if any:
# dependency 'username/name', '>= 1.2.0'
Current List Of Template Files:
./git/gitignore.erb
./git/puppet-git-hooks-pre-commit.erb
./licenses/apachev2.erb
./licenses/mit.erb
./licenses/reserved.erb
./puppet/init.pp.erb
./puppet/ModuleFile.erb
./README.md.erb
./spec/fixtures.yml.erb
./spec/rspec/init_spec.rb.erb
./spec/rspec/spec_helper.rb.erb
./spec/serverspec/init_spec.rb.erb
./spec/serverspec/spec_helper.rb.erb
./util/Gemfile.erb
./util/Rakefile.erb
./vagrant/init.pp.erb
./vagrant/Vagrantfile.erb
Demo
Magnum (our custom Thor based tool)
Questions?
Using Ruby & Thor For Easier Puppet Module Development
By Tehmasp Chaudhri
Using Ruby & Thor For Easier Puppet Module Development
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