terraform-docs VS checkov

Documentation is really important, so having a README.md file inside your Terraform repository that explains how to use the automation (including descriptions of variables and outputs) really help in understanding what has been implemented. To easily generate the description of variables and outputs, you can leverage tfdocs.

‍Terraform-docs is a tool that automatically generates documentation from Terraform modules in various output formats, including markdown, JSON, and others. It's particularly useful for maintaining up-to-date documentation of your Terraform modules' inputs, outputs, providers, and resources.

Earlier this year I wrote about the challenges I faced creating a Terraform module. I mentioned then that I was leveraging terraform-docs and GitHub Actions to automate documentation, but a full workflow walkthrough was out of that post's scope.

### Muti-Stage pipeline for windows trigger: - main variables: terraformDocsVersion: '0.16.0' serviceConnectionName: 'Terraform-SPN-DevOps-MagiconionM' keyvaultName: 'pwd9000-core-kv' pool: vmImage: 'windows-latest' stages: - stage: GenerateTerraformDocumentation jobs: - job: Generate_Terraform_Documentation steps: - checkout: self persistCredentials: true # this allows the later scripts to use the system-provided git token to push changes back to the repo ### Link to key vault. - task: AzureKeyVault@1 inputs: azureSubscription: $(serviceConnectionName) #ADO service connection (Service principal) KeyVaultName: $(keyvaultName) SecretsFilter: 'TerraformDocsPAToken' RunAsPreJob: true displayName: Get PAToken from Keyvault ### Install Terraform-Docs. - powershell: | Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://github.com/terraform-docs/terraform-docs/releases/download/v$(terraformDocsVersion)/terraform-docs-v$(terraformDocsVersion)-windows-amd64.zip" -OutFile "terraform-docs.zip" Expand-Archive -Path "terraform-docs.zip" -DestinationPath "$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)\terraform-docs" -Force $env:Path += ";$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)\terraform-docs" displayName: 'Install terraform-docs' ### Remove all old README.md files and generate new README.md files for each TF module. - powershell: | # Set Modules Root Directory Set-Location "$(Build.SourcesDirectory)\@TF_Modules" # Get all subdirectories (Terraform module directories) $terraformModuleDirs = Get-ChildItem -Path (Get-Location) -Directory # Loop through each directory to cleanup/remove old README files foreach ($dir in $terraformModuleDirs) { # Get all files in the directory $readMeFiles = Get-ChildItem -Path $dir.FullName -Filter 'README.md' # Loop through each file in each terraform module foreach ($file in $readMeFiles) { # Check if README file already exists and remove if ($file) { # Remove the file Remove-Item $file.FullName -Confirm:$false Write-Output "Old file '$($file.Name)' removed from '$($dir.FullName)'" } } #After cleanup create a new README.md file with 'terraform-docs' based on latest TF module code in current folder(terraform module) $tfFiles = Get-ChildItem -Path $dir.FullName -Filter *.tf if ($tfFiles.Count -gt 0) { # Create new README.md file $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)\terraform-docs\terraform-docs.exe markdown table $dir.FullName --output-file "README.md" } else { Write-Output "No .tf files found." } } displayName: 'Cleanup and Generate new README for each TF module' ### Commit and push updated README.md files for TF modules. - powershell: | git config --local user.email "[email protected]" git config --local user.name "Terraform Docs" git add *.md git commit -m "Update README.md for each TF module" git push origin HEAD:$(Build.SourceBranchName) displayName: 'Commit and Push updated README.md files for TF modules' env: SYSTEM_ACCESSTOKEN: $(TerraformDocsPAToken)

I'm going to have to figure out how to run terraform-docs.io against each module. I have zero terraform experience.

Terraform-docs: This tool generates documentation for your Terraform modules in various formats, such as Markdown, HTML, and JSON. Terraform-docs parses your Terraform code and extracts documentation from comments, variable and output descriptions, and input/output examples. The tool then generates a table of contents with links to the relevant documentation for each module, which makes it easy to understand the purpose and usage of each module.

Terraform docs

I have been using https://terraform-docs.io to generate documentation of my terraform modules. However creating nested objects with optionals makes the documentation rather ugly and hard to read. See gh issue which also describes this type of issue: https://github.com/terraform-docs/terraform-docs/issues/656

I am looking for a way to automate doc creation and updates for ansible roles. I recently discovered terraform-docs and I am curious if there is something similar for ansible.

terraform-docs: https://github.com/terraform-docs/terraform-docs

Do you have other Terraform-related open-source tools that you recommend? Please go ahead and add in the comments!

1. Checkov: https://github.com/bridgecrewio/checkov Checkov is a static code analysis tool that helps developers prevent cloud misconfigurations during the development phase by scanning Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubernetes, and more.

Checkov Owner/Maintainer: Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks (acquired in 2021) Age: First released on GitHub on March 31st, 2021 License: Apache License 2.0

‍Checkov is another great tool that examines your Terraform files (.tf), parsing the configurations and evaluating them against a comprehensive set of predefined policies. It scans Terraform-managed infrastructure and detects misconfigurations that could lead to security issues or non-compliance with best practices and regulations.

Bridgecrew — Infrastructure as code (IaC) security powered by the open source tool - Checkov. The core Bridgecrew platform is free for up to 50 IaC resources.

Kustomize: It provides a solution to customize the Kubernetes resource base configuration and differential configuration without template and DSL. It does not solve the constraint problem itself, but needs to cooperate with a large number of additional tools to check constraints, such as Kube-linter, Checkov and kubescape.

Checkov is a versatile static code analysis tool designed for infrastructure as code (IaC) and software composition analysis (SCA). It supports a wide range of technologies, including Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubernetes, Docker, and others, to detect security and compliance issues through graph-based scanning. Checkov also performs SCA scans, identifying vulnerabilities in open source packages and images by checking for Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs). Additionally, it is integrated into Prisma Cloud Application Security, a platform that helps developers secure cloud resources and infrastructure-as-code files, enabling the identification, rectification, and prevention of misconfigurations throughout the development lifecycle.

For your Dockerfiles, you can also scan them. There are lots of tools that can check your Dockerfiles. They will validate if Dockerfile is compliant with Docker best practices such as not using root user, making sure a health check exists, and not exposing the SSH port. You can use Snyk and Checkov.

You could try https://www.checkov.io/

We use https://www.checkov.io/ for this, it's very simple to get started with and works really well as PR quality gate

Once there is a CI pipeline for delivering infra changes you can add static code analysis tools (checkov) and even start testing changes (terratest)