As we announced in the previous blog post over the last few months we have been working on the tool, which will make using CloudFormation way easier.
We are aware of lots of difficulties assigned to creating infrastructure with the help of CloudFormation, that is why we want to present you our brand new tool written in Go – PERUN.
A mighty god.. erm a command line tool that helps with AWS Cloud Formation – a real swiss army knife for templates. You can check it out via its website or repository.
At the top of the list of five worst things in Cloud Formation we mentioned exceedingly long developing-and-validating with external AWS API feedback cycle.
We created Perun to solve this problem – the time was shortened by transferring validation to the local environment.
From this moment you will be able to compose templates in IDE and check it, via Terminal, whether it is armed with all necessary Resources and Properties. Everything is in one place and there is no need of online check (but if such is your wish Perun gives possibility of validation via AWS API). Henceforth creating correct template, which will go through error-sensitive CloudFormation console is faster like never before! What is more Perun is the only linter that provides logical analysis of template’s elements (e.g. it checks if CidrBlock is valid IP address – not only not-empty string) and headhunts difficult to detect errors (e.g. names longer than 64 characters).
This is not the whole list of its special powers. Did you get YAML template but actually prefer working in JSON or vice-versa? Easy-peasy! Perun will make converse between those formats without losing such tender elements like Intrinsic Function, it will even make pretty print of your JSON for better readability.
That is why we call it a swiss army knife – it is small yet powerful tool for many purposes. Don’t hesitate to use it! We are open to all constructive suggestions and possible ideas for improvement. Your feedback is more than welcome!