Write a simple manifest

Puppet manifest files are lists of resources that have a unique title and a set of named attributes that describe the desired state.

Before you begin

You need a text editor, for example Visual Studio Code (VS Code), to create manifest files. Puppet has an extension for VS Code that supports syntax highlighting of the Puppet language. Editors like Notepad++ or Notepad won't highlight Puppet syntax, but can also be used to create manifests.

Manifest files are written in Puppet code, a domain specific language (DSL) that defines the desired state of resources on a system, such as files, users, and packages. Puppet compiles these text-based manifests into catalogs, and uses those to apply configuration changes.

Create a file named file.pp and save it in c:\myfiles\

With your text editor of choice, add the following text to the file:

file { 'c:\\Temp\\foo.txt':
  ensure   => present,
  content  => 'This is some text in my file'
}

Note the following details in this file resource example:

Puppet uses a basic syntax of type { title: }, where type is the resource type — in this case it’s file.
The resource title (the value before the :) is C:\\Temp\\foo.txt. The file resource uses the title to determine where to create the file on disk. A resource title must always be unique within a given manifest.
The ensure parameter is set to present to create the file on disk, if it's not already present. For file type resources, you can also use the value absent, which removes the file from disk if it exists.
The content parameter is set to This is some text in my file, which writes that value to the file.