Project creation guide

This guide explains how to create a project. For detailed documentation see: project.yml.

Create a new source project

The Inmanta compiler expects a project with basic configuration. This project is a directory that contains the source code of the configuration model. This project also matches with a project defined on the server, from which multiple environments can be deployed.

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pip install cookiecutter
cookiecutter gh:inmanta/inmanta-project-template

Note

The cookiecutter template also sets up git for the new project. This is a best practice to version control your infrastructure code.

Inside the project the compiler expects a project.yml file that defines metadata about the project, the location to store modules, repositories where to find modules and possibly specific versions of modules. project.yml defines the following settings:

  • name The name of the project.

  • description An optional description of the project

  • author The author of the module

  • author_email The contact email address of author

  • license License the module is released under

  • copyright Copyright holder name and date.

  • install_mode This key determines what version of a module should be selected when a module is downloaded. The available values are:

    • release (default): Only use a released version, that is compatible with the current compiler and the version constraints defined in the requires list.

    • prerelease: Similar to release, but also prerelease versions are allowed.

    • master: Use the master branch.

  • repo This key requires a list (a yaml list) of repositories where Inmanta can find modules. Inmanta creates the git repo url by formatting {} or {0} with the name of the repo. If no formatter is present it appends the name of the module. Inmanta tries to clone a module in the order in which it is defined in this value.

For more information see project.yml.

An example project.yml could be:

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name: test
description: a test project
author: Inmanta
author_email: code@inmanta.com
license: ASL 2.0
copyright: 2020 Inmanta
modulepath: libs
downloadpath: libs
repo:
    - https://github.com/inmanta/
install_mode: release
requires:

The main file

The main.cf is the place where the compiler starts executing code first. For example, the main.cf below calls the print plugin from the std module.

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std::print("hello world")

Note

The std module is the only module that does not have to be imported explicitly.

This example can be executed with inmanta compile

This prints out “hello world” on stdout. The first execution takes longer because Inmanta needs to fetch (clone) the std module from github. Subsequently compiles will use the std module downloaded to the libs directory.