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Clinton Wolfe 857b9bb11c Plugins: Support for Train Plugins in InSpec (#3444 )

* Unit tests passing for loading Train plugins
* detect works with a train test fixture
* Update fixture install of train-fixture-plugin
* Add functional tests for detect and shell when talking to a train plugin backend
* Update docs to reflect availability of Train plugins
* Functional test for install train plugin from path
* Working install train plugin from path, more tests for installing from odd locations
* PR Feedback

Signed-off-by: Clinton Wolfe <clintoncwolfe@gmail.com>

2018-09-27 18:46:35 -04:00

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About InSpec and Train Plugins

InSpec and Train Plugins

What are InSpec Plugins?

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

What are Train Plugins?

Train Plugins allow 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'd develop a Train Plugin for that, and install it using the 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
connectivity to new types of hosts or cloud providers (train plugins)

Future work might include new capability types, such as:

reporters (output generators)
DSL extensions at the file, control, or test level
attribute fetchers to allow reading InSpec attributes from new sources (for example, a remote, encrypted key-value store)

How do I find out which plugins are available?

The InSpec CLI can tell you which plugins are available:

$ inspec plugin search

How do I install and manage plugins?

The 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.

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