The command below tests the ability to run containers within containers on your local setup.
( This most likely only works on a recent Linux box/VM, which is capable of running rootless containers within containers. Requires kernel >= 5.12, Cgroups V2, podman, ... )

podman run --rm -v .:/workspace -v $HOME/.aws/config:/workspace/.aws/config public.ecr.aws/zero-downtime/cloudbender:latest podman run -q --rm docker.io/busybox:latest echo "Rootless container inception works!"

if you get Rootless container inception works!, add an alias to your environment, eg:

alias cloudbender="podman run --rm -v .:/workspace -v $HOME/.aws/config:/home/cloudbender/.aws/config public.ecr.aws/zero-downtime/cloudbender:latest cloudbender"

and proceed with step 2)

1b. Local install

pip3 install -U cloudbender
curl -fsSL https://get.pulumi.com | sh (official Docs)
either podman or docker depending on your platform

2. Test cli

To verify that all pieces are in place run:

cloudbender version

which should get you something like:

[2022-06-28 16:06:24] CloudBender: 0.13.5
[2022-06-28 16:06:24] Pulumi: v3.34.1
[2022-06-28 16:06:24] Podman/Docker: podman version 4.1.0

CLI

Usage: cloudbender [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  --debug     Turn on debug logging.
  --dir TEXT  Specify cloudbender project directory.
  --help      Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  assimilate         Imports potentially existing resources into Pulumi...
  clean              Deletes all previously rendered files locally
  create-change-set  Creates a change set for an existing stack - CFN only
  create-docs        Parses all documentation fragments out of rendered...
  delete             Deletes stacks or stack groups
  execute            Executes custom Python function within an existing...
  export             Exports a Pulumi stack to repair state
  get-config         Get a config value, decrypted if secret
  outputs            Prints all stack outputs
  preview            Preview of Pulumi stack up operation
  provision          Creates or updates stacks or stack groups
  refresh            Refreshes Pulumi stack / Drift detection
  render             Renders template and its parameters - CFN only
  set-config         Sets a config value, encrypts with stack key if secret
  sync               Renders template and provisions it right away
  validate           Validates already rendered templates using cfn-lint...
  version            Displays own version and all dependencies

Architecture

State management

Pulumi

The state for all Pulumi resources are stored on S3 in your account and in the same region as the resources being deployed. No data is send to nor shared with the official Pulumi provided APIs.

CloudBender configures Pulumi with a local, temporary workspace on the fly. This incl. the injection of various common parameters like the AWS account ID and region etc.

Cloudformation

All state is handled by AWS Cloudformation.
The required account and region are determined by CloudBender automatically from the configuration.

Config management

Within the config folder each directory represents either a stack group if it has sub-directories, or an actual Cloudformation stack in case it is a leaf folder.
The actual configuration for each stack is hierachly merged. Lower level config files overwrite higher-level values. Complex data structures like dictionaries and arrays are deep merged.

Secrets

Pulumi

CloudBender supports the native Pulumi secret handling. See Pulumi Docs for details.

Cloudformation

CloudBender supports SOPS to encrypt values in any config file.

If a sops encrypted config file is detected by CloudBender, it will automatically try to decrypt the file. All required information to decrypt has to be present in the embedded sops config or set ahead of time via sops supported ENVIRONMENT variables.

SOPS support can be disabled by setting DISABLE_SOPS in order to reduce timeouts etc.