Make CI configuration easy to understand (and memorize)

[bittner]

(I'm not sure whether I interpret the content of this repo correctly and reporting here is fine. I apologize if this is plain wrong.)

Migrating a project over to PDK we've noticed that the CI configuration generated by PDK (aka "proposed by Puppet Labs") is somewhat verbose. And not based on commands provided by PDK. Examples:

• .travis.yml
• .gitlab-ci.yml
• appveyor.yml

I believe one of the strong points of PDK is that it finally provides developers with easy-to-memorize one-shot commands that "do it all", e.g.

• perform linting: pdk validate
• run (unit) tests: pdk test unit

Hence, it should be obvious that this simplicity can reflect positively on all any CI configuration related to Puppet. It could look like this:

- install:
  - apt-get install pdk

- script:
  - pdk validate
  - pdk test unit

... or, in a more elaborate setup, using stages (e.g. in Travis):

- stage: validate
  script: pdk validate

- stage: test
  script: pdk test unit

This is a setup you don't need to look up in documentation to get it explained. It's something you can explain to a colleague even as a complete newbie to CI, Travis & friends.

Can someone explain why the current templates still look, I apologize, confusing and use plain bundle, gem, rake commands?

[npwalker]

@bittner I agree with you and speaking with the devs I think that's their ultimate plan but I think they are still clearing some barriers. In the meantime, I made some changes to the various CI configs to make them look more alike.

Also, I put up this PR, #88, to make validating one step instead of multiple steps.

[maxadamo]

@bittner agree... this is the so-called puppet style: lot of files everywhere, spread on each and every possible location, with all the possible syntax flavors.
For instance: puppet uses the Puppetfile and PDK uses a YAML file (.fixtures.yml).
I rather prefer the Yaml version, but this is inconsistent, and it's another file to memorize.

[DavidS]

We do plan to do this. You can track the progress in https://tickets.puppetlabs.com/browse/PDK-709

[bittner]

A recent blog post by @rnelson0 explains that the two PDK commands now seem to reliably do what is expected, and all the validation and test setup can be generated to work locally. Hence, we should be able to throw away all the complicated bundle, gem and rake command collections in all CI setups, once and forever.

Are there any plans to implement this before the end of this year? This should be easy and fast to do.

[scotje]

This issue was moved to puppetlabs/pdk-planning#25