Introduction to Extending Salt

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# Introduction to Extending Salt

Salt is made to be used, and made to be extended. The primary goal of Salt is to provide a foundation which can be used to solve problems. And the goal of Salt is to not assume what those problems might be.

One of the greatest benefit of developing Salt has been the vast array of ways in which people have wanted to use it, while the original intention was as a communication layer for a cloud controller Salt has been extended to facilitate so much more.

## Client API

The primary interface used to extend Salt, is to simply use it. Salt executions can be called via the Salt client api, making programming master side solutions with Salt is easy.

## Adding Loadable Plugins

Salt is comprised of a core platform that loads many types of easy to write plugins. The idea is to enable all of the breaking points in the Salt processes to have a point of pluggable interaction. This means that all of the main features of Salt can be extended, modified or used.

The breaking points and helping interfaces span from convenience master side executions to manipulating the flow of how data is handled by Salt.

### Minion Execution Modules

The minion execution modules or just `modules` are the core to what Salt is and does. These modules are found in:

https://github.com/saltstack/salt/blob/develop/salt/modules

These modules are what is called by the Salt command line and the salt client API. Adding modules is done by simply adding additional Python modules to the modules directory and restarting the minion.

### Grains

Salt grains, or "grains of truth" are bits of static information that are generated when the minion starts. This information is useful when determining what package manager to default to, or where certain configuration files are stored on the minion.

The Salt grains are the interface used for auto detection and dynamic assignment of execution modules and types to specific Salt minions.

The code used to generate the Salt grains can be found here:

https://github.com/saltstack/salt/blob/develop/salt/grains

### States

Salt supports state enforcement, this makes Salt a high speed and very efficient solution for system configuration management.

States can be easily added to Salt by dropping a new state module in:

https://github.com/saltstack/salt/blob/develop/salt/states

### Renderers

Salt states are controlled by simple data structures, these structures can be abstracted in a number of ways. While the default is to be in a yaml file wrapped in a jinja template, any abstraction can be used. This means that any format that can be dreamed is possible, so long as a renderer is written for it.

The existing renderers can be found here:

https://github.com/saltstack/salt/blob/develop/salt/renderers

### Returners

The Salt commands all produce a return value, that return value is sent to the Salt master by default, but it can be sent anywhere. The returner interface makes it programmatically possible for the information to be sent to anything from an SQL or NoSQL database, to a custom application made to use Salt.

The existing returners can be found here:

https://github.com/saltstack/salt/blob/develop/salt/returners

### Runners

Sometimes a certain application can be made to execute and run from the existing Salt command line. This is where the Salt runners come into play. The Salt Runners what is called by the Salt-run command and are meant to act as a generic interface for encapsulating master side executions.

Existing Salt runners are located here:

https://github.com/saltstack/salt/blob/develop/salt/runners

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