I am using Saltstack in a homelab, and I often find myself checking in slightly-broken rules when testing them. I would like to be able to check them for validity, and otherwise lint them, locally and on a Jenkins instance, but I can't find any documentation about how I might do so. Is there something I'm missing?
Syntax issues are multi-layered in Salt (i.g. Jinja -> YAML -> state function args) and there is no tool to cover them all.
The fast answer based on this related issue is to trigger the multi-layered parsing:
salt-call state.show_highstate | tee highstate.output.yaml
salt-call state.show_sls [state_id] | tee state_id.output.yaml
The show_* functions display state data as minion sees it before execution.
Using salt-call on minion side (instead of salt on master side) often provides better debug options - this is mostly a preference.
The problems may also be in pillar or grains (check that all required data is compiled and exists as expected):
salt-call pillar.items | tee pillar.output.yaml
salt-call grains.items | tee grains.output.yaml
Just like @cyfur01 already mentioned, running states directly (with test mode or not) is the last step to troubleshoot:
salt-call state.highstate test=True | tee highstate.output.yaml
salt-call state.sls [state_id] test=True | tee state_id.output.yaml