We should have CI that check syntax for the states for avoiding syntax issues and manual testing.
#67 like

howto

for reference check:

https://github.com/SUSE/saphanabootstrap-formula/blob/master/ci/validate-formula.sh

https://github.com/SUSE/saphanabootstrap-formula/blob/master/.travis.yml

Please excuse the intrusion but I just wanted to bring to people's attention the recently established SaltStack Formulas Working Group.
The aim of the working group is to bring together those people working on Salt formulas with the goal of sharing knowledge and collaborating to enable the effective development of Salt formulas.

Most contributors currently work in the @saltstack-formulas organization but there is no need for this to be exclusive, so if you are interested in joining or seeing what we are up to then please drop by the #formulas channel in the SaltStack community Slack. We also have a Zoom meeting twice a month.

I will close this issue after a short time depending on interest.

On my Uyuni 2021.03 server, I've added a SLES 12 SP5 system that is hosting a few VMs on KVM. When I enable the virtualization-host formula for this host, the highstate can never be installed:

----------
          ID: virthost_packages
    Function: pkg.installed
        Name: virthost_packages
      Result: false
     Comment: An error was encountered while installing package(s): Zypper command failure: Running scope as unit run-r79db77c2e2734aaa93021b5b59f9aaf3.scope.
Package 'python3-libvirt-python' not found.
     Started: 21:31:50.436522
    Duration: 722.826
         SLS: virtualization-host
     Changed: {}
----------
          ID: null
    Function: service.running
        Name: null
      Result: false
     Comment: One or more requisite failed: virtualization-host.virthost_packages
     Started: 21:31:51.160504
    Duration: 0.015
         SLS: virtualization-host
     Changed: {}
----------

On SLES 12 SP5, there is no package called python3-libvirt-python, rather it has the python-libvirt-python package. I believe, the issue is in the following line where the package name is hardcoded rather than being put in a conditional:

If I move this package to the condition at the top of the file, then I'm able to apply the highstate on the SLES 12 SP5 host machine. But I do not know if this is the right way to handle this:

# diff -u /tmp/map.jinja /usr/share/susemanager/formulas/states/virtualization-host/map.jinja
--- /tmp/map.jinja      2021-04-29 02:10:55.890300715 +0530
+++ /usr/share/susemanager/formulas/states/virtualization-host/map.jinja        2021-04-29 02:01:22.867180432 +0530
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@
     {% set hypervisor_packages = [
         'patterns-server-%s_server'|format(pillar['hypervisor']|lower()),
         'python3-six',
+        'python3-libvirt-python',
        ]
     %}
   {% elif grains['osfullname'] == 'Leap' %}
@@ -21,7 +22,6 @@
       'qemu-tools',
       'guestfs-tools',
       'libvirt-client',
-      'python3-libvirt-python',
       'kernel-default',
     ]
   %}

Ansible has a variable for this, ansible_managed. Salt does not. I suggest to add "This file is managed by SaltStack, all changes will be lost." in the first few lines of each template that fully manages a file.

Example: https://github.com/SUSE/salt-formulas/blob/master/bind-formula/bind/files/suse/named.conf

Edit: I noticed in the commit messages that you consider yourself not the upstream of the bind formula. From running a diff, I conclude that you consider https://github.com/saltstack-formulas/bind-formula as upstream, but there the SUSE version has custom features that are not upstreamed?

Lets use this https://github.com/SUSE/salt-formulas/blob/master/prometheus-formula/prometheus/files/general-rules.yml as example because with BIND, I should probably fix it upstream.