Puppet-C

A C implementation of a Puppet language parser and interpreter using flex/bison.

Note: This is an experimental project. It implements a subset of the Puppet language and is not a replacement for the real Puppet.

Building

Prerequisites:

• GCC, flex, bison
• Ruby development headers (for ERB templates)
• libyaml (for Hiera)
• libssl/openssl (for crypto functions)
• libmicrohttpd (for puppetc-server)
• libcurl (for puppetc-agent)

autoreconf -i
./configure
make
make check

Docker

Build and run using Docker (no dependencies needed on host).

Sample manifests, modules, and hiera data are provided in docker/.

# Build images
docker build --target server -t puppetc-server .
docker build --target agent -t puppetc-agent .

# Run server with sample manifests
docker run -d -p 8140:8140 \
    -v ./docker/manifests:/etc/puppet/manifests:ro \
    puppetc-server

# Run agent (noop mode)
docker run --rm --network host puppetc-agent -n

# Run agent (apply mode)
docker run --rm --network host puppetc-agent -a

Or use docker-compose (uses docker/ sample data):

# Start server
docker-compose up -d server

# Run agent in noop mode
docker-compose run agent

# Run agent in apply mode
docker-compose run agent -a

Usage

# Parse only
./src/puppetc manifest.pp

# Parse and evaluate
./src/puppetc -e manifest.pp

# With facts
./src/puppetc -e -f facts.json manifest.pp

# JSON AST output
./src/puppetc -j manifest.pp

Run ./src/puppetc --help for all options.

Catalog Server

# Start server
./server/puppetc-server -p 8140 /etc/puppet/manifests

# Compile catalog via API
curl -X POST http://localhost:8140/puppet/v4/catalog \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{"certname": "node1.example.com"}'

Native Fact Collection

# Show all facts
./facter/facter_c

# Specific facts
./facter/facter_c hostname ipaddress osfamily

# JSON output
./facter/facter_c -j

Puppet Agent

# Run agent (connects to localhost:8140)
./agent/puppetc-agent

# Apply catalog resources
./agent/puppetc-agent -a

# No-op mode (show what would change)
./agent/puppetc-agent -n

# Specify server
./agent/puppetc-agent -s http://puppet:8140 -a

# Just show collected facts
./agent/puppetc-agent -f

What Works

• Basic parsing of classes, resources, nodes, defines
• Conditionals: if/elsif/else, unless, case, ternary, selector
• Variable scoping and interpolation
• ERB templates (via embedded Ruby)
• Hiera lookups (YAML backend)
• Module autoloading
• Many stdlib functions (see below)

Known Limitations

• Class instantiation with single quotes may fail due to parser ambiguity:

  # Use double quotes:
  class { "apache": }

• No resource catalog generation
• No PuppetDB support
• Incomplete stdlib coverage
• Many edge cases not handled

Implemented Functions

Logging: notice, info, warning, debug, err, fail

Strings: split, join, chomp, strip, upcase, downcase, capitalize, match, regsubst

Arrays: concat, flatten, unique, sort, reverse, first, last, length, member, range

Hashes: keys, values, has_key, merge

Numeric: abs, floor, ceil, round, sqrt, min, max

Types: is_string, is_array, is_hash, is_numeric, is_bool, defined

Path: basename, dirname, extname

Crypto: sha1, md5, base64

Data: lookup

Roadmap

Target Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                      Libraries                              │
├─────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────┤
│  libpuppetc         │  libfacter_c                          │
│  - Parser/Lexer     │  - Native fact collection             │
│  - AST              │  - JSON fact loading                  │
│  - Interpreter      │  - System info (hostname, os, etc.)   │
│  - Stdlib           │                                       │
│  - Hiera            │                                       │
│  - Catalog builder  │                                       │
└─────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────┘
           │                        │
           ▼                        ▼
┌─────────────────┐  ┌──────────────────┐  ┌─────────────────┐
│ puppetc-server  │  │ puppetc-agent    │  │ puppetc         │
│                 │  │                  │  │ (debug tool)    │
│ - REST API      │  │ - Collect facts  │  │ - Parse/eval    │
│ - Compile       │  │ - Request catalog│  │ - JSON output   │
│   catalogs      │  │ - Apply catalog  │  │ - Template debug│
└─────────────────┘  └──────────────────┘  └─────────────────┘