The goal of this project is to implement as many of the recommended Puppet style guidelines from the Puppet Labs style guide as practical.

gem install puppet-lint

You can test a single manifest file by running

puppet-lint <path to file>

If you want to test your entire Puppet manifest directory, you can add require 'puppet-lint/tasks/puppet-lint' to your Rakefile and then run

rake lint

At the moment, the following tests have been implemented:

• Must use two-space soft tabs.
• Must not use literal tab characters.
• Must not contain trailing white space.
• Should not exceed an 80 character line width
  • An exception has been made for source => 'puppet://...' lines as splitting these over multiple lines decreases the readability of the manifests.
• Should align arrows (=>) within blocks of attributes.

• All strings that do not contain variables should be enclosed in single quotes.
  • An exception has been made for double quoted strings containing \n or \t.
• All strings that contain variables must be enclosed in double quotes.
• All variables should be enclosed in braces when interpolated in a string.
• Variables standing by themselves should not be quoted.

• All resource titles should be quoted.
• If a resource declaration includes an ensure attribute, it should be the first attribute specified.
• Symbolic links should be declared by using an ensure value of link and explicitly specifying a value for the target attribute.
• File modes should be represented as a 4 digit string enclosed in single quotes.

• You should not intermingle conditionals inside resource declarations (i.e. selectors inside resources).
• Case statements should have a default case.

• Relationship declarations with the chaining syntax should only be used in the 'left to right' direction.
• Classes should not be defined inside a class.
• Defines should not be defined inside a class.
• Classes should not inherit between namespaces.
• Required parameters in class & defined type definitions should be listed before optional parameters.
• When using top-scope variables, including facts, Puppet modules should explicitly specify the empty namespace.

If you find a bug in puppet-lint or its results, please create an issue in the repo issues tracker. Bonus points will be awarded if you also include a patch that fixes the issue.