Region settings not loaded according to what is documented

[mattock]

Describe the Bug

README.md claims the following about the region setting:

---

In order of precedence:

• region: in the inventory or config file
• ENV['AWS_REGION']
• ~/.aws/credentials

---

The Bolt task does not seem to respect the region set in either ~/.aws/credentials or in ~/.aws/config. In general reading the region from the credentials file might or might not work, but it seems incorrect. The official AWS documentation says thats ensitive settings should go to credentials and insensitive to config. That's what "aws configure" command also does.

A related issue is that setting AWS_REGION environment variable (as documented) does not seem to work. You need to explicitly set the region with env_var plugin, e.g. like this:

--- snip ---
       region:
         _plugin: env_var
         var: AWS_REGION
--- snip ---

Expected Behavior

I would expect the region setting in a named profile in ~/.aws/config to be respected by this inventory plugin. I would also expect AWS_REGION environment parameter to be respected without extra tricks like using the env_var plugin.

Steps to Reproduce

Add an aws_inventory group to inventory.yaml. For example:

groups:
  - name: aws
    targets:
     - _plugin: aws_inventory
       target_mapping:
         name: tags.Name
         uri: private_ip_address

Create ~/.aws/credentials:

[foobar]
aws_access_key_id=access-key-id
aws_secret_access_key=secret-access-key

Create ~/.aws/config:

[profile foobar]
region=eu-central-1

Set AWS_PROFILE environment variable:

export AWS_PROFILE=foobar

Now try to use the inventory:

$ bolt inventory show
Task aws_inventory::resolve_reference:
 expects a value for parameter 'region'

Environment

• Fedora release 35 (Thirty Five)
• Bolt 3.22.1

Additional context

Things that did not help:

• Defining the AWS profile name (profile: foobar) in the inventory
• Defining the region in the default section of the AWS credentials or config files