Puppet Language Parser

This is a parser for .pp (puppet) or .epp (embedded puppet) files written in Go.

The parse program

A command line utility named parse is provided. It prints errors and warnings on stderr, and returns a non zero exit status on failure. On success, it produces a representation of the AST on stdout.

Usage:

parse [-v][-j] <path to pp or epp file>

-v	Validate only, i.e. suppress generation of AST.
-j	JSON output. Outputs a JSON object with issues and ast keys. The issues key will only be present when there were issues.

The JSON output

The output from the parser when using the -j option is in the JSON format defined in Puppet Notation (PN) specification.

The parser package

What it is

The parser go-package is a library that can be used by other applications that wishes to parse puppet effortlessly and validate code and use the AST. See parser.go for sample usage of Parser and Validator.

What it is not

This is not a evaluator (A.K.A. compiler). An evaluator that acts on the produced AST would be one way of using the parser package.

Getting started

Install the go runtime

This step is different depending on platform. On a Redhat/Debian system:

$ sudo yum install go

Set up environment

$ export GOPATH="$HOME/go"
$ export PATH="$PATH:$GOPATH/bin"

Clone this repo into its package location

$ mkdir -p "$GOPATH/src/github.com/lyraproj"
$ cd "$GOPATH/src/github.com/lyraproj"
$ git clone git@github.com:lyraproj/puppet-parser.git

Install the command

The command is now ready to be installed using go install. Since this command acts on the setting of GOPATH it doesn't matter what directory you're in when executing it. The binary will be installed in $GOPATH/bin regardless.

$ go install github.com/lyraproj/puppet-parser/parse

Use the command

$ parse some_manifest.pp

This is work in progress

This project is work in progress. There is no release yet and absolutely no guarantee that things will not change radically in the near future.

Parser status:

• Puppet 4.x compliant lexer
• Puppet 4.x compliant parser
• Puppet 4.x compliant validator
• CLI and executable for validating .pp and .epp files
• AST construction
• Puppet Extended S-Expression Notation of AST
• JSON serialization of AST
• Options to conditionally allow lexer/parser to understand PSpec constructs
• Errors and warnings using issue codes and named arguments
• Puppet 5.x (introduction of keyword 'plan')
• API documentation
• A JSON schema is needed to describe the json format for the AST

Contributing

Please contact the author Thomas Hallgren if you have ideas or want to use this code.