Requirements

Source Host

This is the machine you use to configure the target hosts.

• /bin/sh: A posix like shell (for instance bash, dash, zsh)
• Python >= 3.2
• SSH client
• Asciidoc and xsltproc (for building the manpages)

Target Hosts

• /bin/sh: A posix like shell (for instance bash, dash, zsh)
• SSH server

Install cdist

You can install cdist either from git or as a python package.

From git

Cloning cdist from git gives you the advantage of having a version control in place for development of your own stuff immediately.

To install cdist, execute the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/ungleich/cdist.git
cd cdist
export PATH=$PATH:$(pwd -P)/bin

From version 4.2.0 cdist tags and github releases are signed. You can get GPG public key used for signing here.

Available versions in git

• The active development takes place in the master branch
• The current stable version can be found in the 2.0 branch
• The upcoming stable version can be found in the 2.1 branch

Other branches may be available for features or bugfixes, but they may vanish at any point. To select a specific branch use

# Generic code
git checkout -b <localbranchname> origin/<branchname>

So for instance if you want to use and stay with version 2.0, you can use

git checkout -b 2.0 origin/2.0

Git Mirrors

If the main site is down, you can acquire cdist from one of the following sites:

• git://github.com/telmich/cdist.git (github)
• git://git.code.sf.net/p/cdist/code (sourceforge)

Building and using documentation (man and html)

If you want to build and use the documentation, run:

make docs

Documentation comes in two formats, man pages and full HTML documentation. Documentation is built into distribution's docs/dist directory. man pages are in docs/dist/man and HTML documentation in docs/dist/html.

If you want to use man pages, run:

export MANPATH=$MANPATH:$(pwd -P)/docs/dist/man

Or you can move manpages from docs/dist/man directory to some other directory and add it to MANPATH.

Full HTML documentation can be accessed at docs/dist/html/index.html.

You can also build manpages for types in your ~/.cdist directory:

make dotman

Built manpages are now in docs/dist/man directory. If you have some other custom .cdist directory, e.g. /opt/cdist then use:

DOT_CDIST_PATH=/opt/cdist make dotman

Python Package

Cdist is available as a python package at PyPi. You can install it using

pip install cdist

Use cdist

Dig into the documentation to get started with cdist!