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inspec/docs/plugins.md
Ken Crouch 35d2b9c78a Change "an Chef Inspec" to "a Chef Inspec". 
Change "that users Ruby variables" to "that uses Ruby variables".

Obvious fix.

Signed-off-by: Ken Crouch <kcrouch@chef.io>
2019-11-01 14:12:33 -07:00

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About Chef InSpec and Train Plugins

Chef InSpec and Train Plugins

What are Chef InSpec Plugins?

Chef InSpec Plugins are optional software components that extend the capabilities of InSpec. For example, inspec-iggy is a Plugin project that aims to generate Chef InSpec controls from infrastructure-as-code files. Plugins are distributed as RubyGems, and Chef InSpec manages their installation. Chef InSpec Plugins always begin with the prefix 'inspec-'.

What are Train Plugins?

Train Plugins allow Chef InSpec to speak to new kinds of targets (typically new remote targets or APIs, but you could treat the local system in a new way if you wished to). For example, if you wanted to audit a Kubernetes cluster, you might want a transport that can talk to the supervisor API. You would develop a Train Plugin for that, and install it using the Chef InSpec command line. Train Plugins always begin with the prefix 'train-'.

What can plugins do?

Currently, each plugin can offer one or more of these capabilities:

  • define a new command-line-interface (CLI) command suite (inspec plugins)
  • connectivity to new types of hosts or cloud providers (train plugins)
  • DSL extensions at the file, control, describe block, or test level
  • DSL extensions for custom resources

Future work might include new capability types, such as:

  • reporters (output generators)
  • attribute fetchers to allow reading Chef InSpec attributes from new sources (for example, a remote encrypted key-value store)

How do I find out which plugins are available?

The Chef InSpec CLI can tell you which plugins are available:

$ inspec plugin search inspec-

How do I install and manage plugins?

The Chef InSpec command line now offers a new subcommand just for managing plugins.

You can install a plugin by running:

$ inspec plugin install inspec-some-plugin
$ inspec plugin install train-some-plugin

For more details on what the plugin command can do, see the online help, or run inspec plugin help.

How do I write a plugin?

Chef InSpec Plugins

For details on how to author a Chef InSpec Plugin, see the developer documentation

Train Plugins

For details on how to author a Train Plugin, see the developer documentation