PDK Templates

The PDK Templates is the default templates repository for use with the Puppet Development Kit, within which we have defined all the templates for the creation and configuration of a module. Look into these directories to find the templates:

• moduleroot templates get deployed on new module, convert and update; use them to enforce a common boilerplate for central files.
• moduleroot_init templates get only deployed when the target module does not yet exist; use them to provide skeletons for files the developer needs to modify heavily.
• object_templates templates are used by the various new ... commands for classes, defined types, etc.

PDK builds the configuration of the module by reading a set of default configuration from config_defaults.yml and merging it with the contents of .sync.yml from module's root directory, if exists. Top-level keys of the resulting hash correspond to target files or represent a global configuration. Global configuration will be merged with the configuration hash for a particular target file. This allows a module developer to override/amend the configuration by putting new values into .sync.yml. A knockout prefix may be applied to elements within .sync.yml to remove elements from the default set. Target files are created by rendering a corresponding template which is referring its configuration via the @configs hash. The data for a target file may include delete: true or unmanaged: true in order to have the particular file removed from the module or left unmanaged, respectively.

• Basic usage
• Values of config_defaults
• Making local changes to the Template
• Further Notes

Basic Usage

Templates like this one can be used in conjunction with the PDK. As default the PDK itself uses the templates within this repository to render files for use within a module. Templates can be passed to the PDK as a flag for several of the commands.

pdk convert --template-url https://github.com/puppetlabs/pdk-templates

Please note that the template only needs to be passed in once if you wish to change it, every command run on the PDK will use the last specified template. For more on basic usage and more detailed description of the PDK in action please refer to the PDK documentation.

Values of config_defaults

The following is a description and explaination of each of the keys within config_defaults. This will help clarify the default settings we choose to apply to pdk modules.

.gitattributes

A .gitattributes file in your repo allows you to ensure consistent git settings.

Key	Description
include	Defines which extensions are handled by git automatic conversions (see the gitattributes documentation). The default configuration helps to keep line endings consistent between windows and linux users.

.gitignore

A .gitignore file in your repo allows you to specify intentionally untracked files to ignore.

Key	Description
paths	Defines which files or paths for git to ignore or untrack. (see the gitignore documentation). The default configuration helps to set up commonly ignored or untracked files in a module project.

.gitlab-ci.yml

Gitlab CI is a continuous integration platform that is free for all open source projects hosted on Github and Gitlab.com, it also has a self-hosted option that is free as well. We can trigger automated pipelines with ever change to our code base in the master branch, other branches, tags, or additional triggers. Gitlab CI uses a .gitlab-ci.yml file in the root of your repository tell Gitlab CI what jobs to run when in the pipeline.

Key	Description
override	Defines whether your local .sync.yml will ignore the default values in pdk-templates. Defaults to false
defaults/custom	The defaults and custom keys are special keys used to denote when configuration is coming from config_defaults.yml or .sync.yml. While it is possible for users to extend the defaults provided by PDK, it's suggested that the user should only use the custom key to separate their overrides/extended configuration from the PDK provided defaults.
custom_stages	Defines a custom job stage for when the CI/CD jobs will be executed in the pipeline. By default syntax and unit are defined unless override: true.
beaker	Defines if you want the default, Docker-in-Docker acceptance job added. Can be set to true to enable the default acceptance job, or you can specify the variables and tags subkeys. These subkeys function the same as the global_variables option and the tags subkey found in the ruby_versions option.
global_variables	Allows you to set any global environment variables for the gitlab-ci pipeline. Currently includes setting the Puppet gem version.
cache	If this setting exists, it expects a single sub-key called paths. paths is an array of paths that will be cached for each subsequent job. Defaults to ['vendor/bundle']
bundler_args	Define any arguments you want to pass through to bundler. The default is --without system_tests --path vendor/bundle --jobs $(nproc) which avoids installing unnessesary gems while installing them to the `vendor/bundler.
ruby_versions	Define a list of ruby_versions to test against. Each version can have a series of sub-keys that are options. checks is the rake command(s) to run during the job. puppet_version sets the PUPPET_GEM_VERSION environment variable. allow_failure is an array of checks where you want to allow failures. tags is an array of Gitlab CI Runner tags.
custom_jobs	Define custom Gitlab CI jobs that will be executed. It is recommended that you use this option if you need customized Gitlab CI jobs. Please see the .gitlab-ci.yml docs for specifics.
rubygems_mirror	Use a custom rubygems mirror url
image	Define the Docker image to use, when using the Docker runner. Please see the Using Docker images docs for specifics.
custom_before_steps	Allows you to pass additional steps to the GitLab CI before_script. Please see the .gitlab-ci.yml docs for specifics.

.pdkignore

A .pdkignore file in your repo allows you to specify files to ignore when building a module package with pdk build.

Key	Description
paths	Defines which files or paths for PDK to ignore when building a module package. The default configuration helps to set up commonly ignored files in a module project when building a package.

.travis.yml

Travis CI is a hosted continuous integration platform that is free for all open source projects hosted on Github. We can trigger automated builds with every change to our code base in the master branch, other branches or even a pull request. Travis uses a .travis.yml file in the root of your repository to learn about your project and how you want your builds to be executed.

Key	Description
dist	If specified, it will set the dist attribute. See the TravisCI documentation for more details.
simplecov	Set to true to enable collecting ruby code coverage.
ruby_versions	Define the ruby versions on which you want your builds to be executed.
bundler_args	Define any arguments you want to pass through to bundler. The default is --without system_tests which avoids installing unnessesary gems.
env	Allows you to add new travis job matrix entries based on the included environmnet variables, one per env entry; for example, for adding jobs with specific PUPPET_GEM_VERSION and/or CHECK values. See the Travis Environment Variables documentation for details.
global_env	Allows you to set global environment variables which will be defined for all travis jobs; for example, PARALLEL_TEST_PROCESSORS or TIMEOUT. See the Travis Global Environment Variables documentation for details.
docker_sets	Allows you to configure sets of docker to run your tests on. For example, if I wanted to run on a docker instance of Ubuntu I would add set:docker/ubuntu-14.04 to my docker_sets attribute. The docker_sets is a hash that supports the 'set', 'testmode', and 'collection' keys.
docker_sets['set']	This should refrence the docker nodeset that you wish to run.
docker_sets['testmode']	This configures the BEAKER_TESTMODE to use when testing the docker instance. The two options are apply and agent if omitted apply is used by default.
docker_sets['collection]	This configures the BEAKER_PUPPET_COLLECTION to use when testing the docker instance. The default is puppet6.
docker_defaults	Defines what values are used as default when using the docker_sets definition. Includes ruby version, sudo being enabled, the distro, the services, the env variables and the script to execute.
stages	Allows the specification of order and conditions for travis-ci build stages. See Specifying Stage Order and Conditions.
includes	Ensures that the .travis file includes the following checks by default: Rubocop, Puppet Lint, Metadata Lint.
remove_includes	Allows you to remove includes set in config_defaults.yml.
branches	Allows you to specify the only branches that travis will run builds on. The default branches are master and /^v\d/.
branches_except	Allows you to specify branches that travis will not build on.
remove_branches	Allows you to remove default branches set in config_defaults.yml.
notifications	Allows you to specify the notifications configuration in the .travis.yml file.
remove_notifications	Allows you to remove default branches set in config_defaults.yml.
before_deploy	An array which can allow a user to specify the commands to run before kicking off a deployment. See [https://docs.travis-ci.com/user/deployment/releases/#setting-the-tag-at-deployment-time].
user	This string needs to be set to the Puppet Forge user name. To enable deployment the secure key also needs to be set.
secure	This string needs to be set to the encrypted password to enable deployment. See https://docs.travis-ci.com/user/encryption-keys/#usage for instructions on how to encrypt your password.

.yardopts

YARD is a documentation generation tool for the Ruby programming language. It enables the user to generate consistent, usable documentation that can be exported to a number of formats very easily, and also supports extending for custom Ruby constructs such as custom class level definitions.

Key	Description
markup	Specifies the markup formatting of your documentation. Default is markdown.
optional	Define any additional arguments you want to pass through to the yardoc command.

appveyor.yml

AppVeyor is a hosted, distributed continuous integration service used to build and test projects hosted on GitHub by spinning up a Microsoft Windows virtual machine. AppVeyor is configured by adding a file named appveyor.yml, which is a YAML format text file, to the root directory of the code repository.

Key	Description
appveyor_bundle_install	Defines the bundle install command for the appveyor execution run. In our case we use bundle install --without system_tests as default, therefore avoiding redundant gem installation.
environment	Defines any environment variables wanted for the job run. In our case we default to the latest Puppet 4 gem version.
matrix	This defines the matrix of jobs to be executed at runtime. Each defines environment variables for that specific job run. In our defaults we have a Ruby version specfied, followed by the check that will be run for that job.
simplecov	Set to true to enable collecting ruby code coverage.
test_script	This defines the test script that will be executed. For our purposes the default is set to bundle exec rake %CHECK%. As appveyor iterates through the test matrix as we defined above, it resolves the variable CHECK and runs the resulting command. For example, our last test script would be executed as bundle exec rake spec, which would run the spec tests of the module.

Rakefile

Rake is a Make-like program implemented in Ruby. Tasks and dependencies are specified in standard Ruby syntax within the Rakefile, present in the root directory of the code repository. Within modules context Rake tasks are used quite frequently, from ensuring the integrity of a module, running validation and tests, to tasks for releasing modules.

Key	Description
requires	A list of hashes with the library to 'require', and an optional 'conditional'.
changelog_user	Sets the github user for the change_log_generator rake task. Optional, if not set it will read the author from the metadata.json file.
changelog_project	Sets the github project name for the change_log_generator rake task. Optional, if not set it will parse the source from the metadata.json file
changelog_since_tag	Sets the github since_tag for the change_log_generator rake task. Required for the changlog rake task.
changelog_version_tag_pattern	Template how the version tag is to be generated. Defaults to 'v%s' which eventually align with tag_pattern property of puppet-blacksmith, thus changelog is referring to the correct version tags and compare URLs.
default_disabled_lint_checks	Defines any checks that are to be disabled by default when running lint checks. As default we disable the --relative lint check, which compares the module layout relative to the module root. Does affect .puppet-lint.rc.
extra_disabled_lint_checks	Defines any checks that are to be disabled as extras when running lint checks. No defaults are defined for this configuration. Does affect .puppet-lint.rc.
extras	An array of extra lines to add into your Rakefile. As an alternative you can add a directory named rakelib to your module and files in that directory that end in .rake would be loaded by the Rakefile.
linter_options	An array of options to be passed into linter config. Does affect .puppet-lint.rc.
linter_fail_on_warnings	A boolean indicating if the linter should exit non-zero on warnings as well as failures. Does affect .puppet-lint.rc.

.rubocop.yml

RuboCop is a Ruby static code analyzer. We use Rubocop to enforce a level of quility and consistancy within Ruby code. Rubocop can be configured within .rubocop.yml which is located in the root directory of the code repository. Rubocop works by defining a sanitized list of cops that'll cleanup a code base without much effort, all of which support autocorrect and that are fairly uncontroversial across wide segments of the Community.

Key	Description
include_todos	Allows you to use rubocop's "TODOs" to temporarily skip checks by setting this to true. See rubocop's --auto-gen-config option for details. Defaults to false.
selected_profile	Allows you to define which profile is used by default, which is set to strict, which is fully defined within the profiles section.
default_configs	Allows you to define the default configuration of which cops will run. Includes the full name of the cop followed by a description of it and an enforced style. Can also make use of the key excludes to exclude any files from that specific cop.
cleanup_cops	Defines a set of cleanup cops to then be included within a rubocop profile. Cops are defined by their full name, and further configuration can be done by specifying secondary keys. By default we specify a large amount of cleanup cops using their default configuration.
profiles	Defines the profiles that can be enabled and used within rubocop through the selected_profile option. By default we have set up three profiles: cleanups_only, strict, hardcore and off.

Gemfile

A Gemfile is a file we create which is used for describing gem dependencies for Ruby programs. All modules should have an associated Gemfile for installing the relevant gems. As development and testing is somewhat consistant between modules we have used the template to define a set of gems relevant to these processes.

Key	Description
required	Allows you to specify gems that are required within the Gemfile. Gems can be defined here within groups, for example we use the :development gem group to add in several gems that are relevant to the development of any module and the :system_tests gem group for gems relevant only to acceptance testing.
optional	Allows you to specify additional gems that are required within the Gemfile. This key can be used to further configure the Gemfile through assignment of a value in the .sync.yml file.

Within each Gem group defined using the options above one or more gem item definitions may be listed in an array. Each item in that array must be a gem item hash.

Gem Item Hash Keys	Description
gem	Required option specifying the gem name.
version	Required option to specify version or range of versions required using RubyGem version syntax.
platforms	Defines an array of platforms for which the Gem should be included. See the Gemfile platform guide for a list of valid platforms.
git	If required, specify a specific Git repository in which this Gem is located. See the Bundler docs for details.
branch	Optionally specify a branch to use if using the git option. Defaults to master.
ref	Optionally specify an arbitrary valid Git reference to use for the module version.
source	Specify an alternate Rubygems repository to load the gem from.
from_env	Specifies an environment variable containing either a Rubygem version specification indicating the version to use OR a URL indicating the location from which to load the gem.
condition	An optional string containing a Ruby-code conditional controlling if this gem will be processed in the Gemfile.

spec/default_facts.yml

The spec/default_facts.yml file contains a list of facts to be used by default when running rspec tests

Key	Description
concat_basedir	Overrides the concat_basedir fact's value in the base template. Defaults to "/tmp".
ipaddress	Overrides the ipaddress fact's value in the base template. Defaults to "172.16.254.254".
is_pe	Overrides the is_pe fact's value in the base template. Defaults to false.
macaddress	Overrides the macaddress fact's value in the base template. Defaults to "AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA".
extra_facts	List of extra facts to be added to the default_facts.yml file. They are in the form: "name of fact: value of fact"

spec/spec_helper.rb

The spec/spec_helper.rb file contains setup for rspec tests

Key	Description
hiera_config	Sets the hiera_config rspec-puppet parameter.
hiera_config_ruby	Sets the hiera_config rspec-puppet parameter. A ruby expression returning the path to your hiera.yaml file. hiera_config takes precedence if both values hiera_config and hiera_config_ruby are specified.
mock_with	Defaults to ':mocha'. Recommended to be set to ':rspec', which uses RSpec's built-in mocking library, instead of a third-party one.
spec_overrides	An array of extra lines to add into your spec_helper.rb. Can be used as an alternative to spec_helper_local
strict_level	Defines the Puppet Strict configuration parameter. Defaults to :warning. Other values are: :error and :off. :error provides strictest level checking and is encouraged.
coverage_report	Enable rspec-puppet coverage reports. Defaults to false
minimum_code_coverage_percentage	The desired code coverage percentage required for tests to pass. Defaults to 0

Making local changes to the template

While we provide a basic template it is likely that it will not match what you need exactly, as such we allow it to be altered or added to through the use of the .sync.yml file.

Adding configuration values

Values can be added to the data passed to the templates by adding them to your local .sync.yml file, thus allowing you to make changes such as testing against additional operating systems or adding new rubocop rules.

To add a value to an array simply place it into the .sync.yml file as shown below, here I am adding an additional unit test run against Puppet 4:

.travis.yml:
  includes:
    - env: PUPPET_GEM_VERSION="~> 4.0" CHECK=parallel_spec
      rvm: 2.1.9

Removing default configuration values

Values can be removed from the data passed to the templates using the knockout prefix --- in .sync.yml.

To remove a value from an array, prefix the value ---. For example, to remove 2.5.1 from the ruby_versions array in .travis.yml:

.travis.yml:
  ruby_versions:
    - '---2.5.1'

To remove a key from a hash, set the value to ---. For example, to remove the ipaddress fact from spec/default_facts.yml:

spec/default_facts.yml:
  ipaddress: '---'

Setting custom gems in the Gemfile

To add a custom internal puppet-lint plugin served from an internal Rubygems source, add an entry similar to the following in .sync.yml file and run pdk update.

Gemfile:
  optional:
    ':development':
      - gem: 'puppet-lint-my_awesome_custom_module'
        version: '>= 2.0'
        source: 'https://myrubygems.example.com/'

Enabling Beaker system tests

To enable the ability to run Beaker system tests on your module, add the following entry to your .sync.yml and run pdk update.

Gemfile:
  required:
    ':system_tests':
      - gem: 'puppet-module-posix-system-r#{minor_version}'
        platforms: ruby
      - gem: 'puppet-module-win-system-r#{minor_version}'
        platforms:
          - mswin
          - mingw
          - x64_mingw
.gitlab-ci.yml:
  bundler_args: --with system_tests --path vendor/bundle --jobs $(nproc)
  beaker: true
appveyor.yml:
  appveyor_bundle_install: "bundle install --jobs 4 --retry 2 --with system_tests"

Further Notes

Please note that the early version of this template contained only a 'moduleroot' directory, and did not have a 'moduleroot_init'. The PDK 'pdk new module' command will still work with templates that only have 'moduleroot', however the 'pdk convert' command will fail if the template does not have a 'moduleroot_init' directory present. To remedy this please use the up to date version of the template.