Staying on the lookout for code smells

Be on the lookout for code smells, especially as your Puppet code base ages! The following link is a research project that describes a bunch of Puppet code smells, which is an XP (extreme programming) term meaning code issues—usually meaning either a poor design or implementation: http://www.tusharma.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ConfigurationSmells_preprint.pdf

Let's quickly run through using the Puppeteer Python-based tool used in the preceding research project:

1. Ensure you have the latest Java SDK installed.
2. Move to your workspace directory ~/workspace, and clone the following Git repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/tushartushar/Puppeteer
$ cd Puppeteer

• Download the PMD tool (https://github.com/pmd/pmd ) and update the path in the shell script. PMD is an extensible static code analyzer with copy-paste-detector (CPD) built-in.
• Update the folder path where all the Puppet repositories are placed.
• Execute the cpdRunner.sh shell script to carry out clone detection using the PMD-CPD tool.
• Update the REPO_ROOT constant in SmellDetector/Constants.py, which represents the folder path where all the Puppet repositories are placed.
• Execute Puppeteer.py.
• Analyze Puppet repository with puppet-lint (optional).
• Execute puppet-lintRunner.py after setting the repository root.
• Set the repository root in Puppet-lint_aggregator/PLConstants.py.
• Execute PuppetLintRules.py, it will generate a consolidated summary of the analysis for all the analyzed projects.