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Getting Started with Comet

Welcome to Comet - a cosmic tool for provisioning and managing infrastructure with JavaScript-based configuration.

What is Comet?​

Comet is a command-line interface (CLI) tool designed to streamline infrastructure provisioning and management. It provides a unified interface for handling infrastructure operations with modern tooling and practices, built on top of Terraform/OpenTofu.

Why Comet?​

Comet fills the gap between plain Terraform/OpenTofu and heavy enterprise frameworks, offering a pragmatic solution for teams that need DRY infrastructure configurations without the overhead of complex tooling.

Key Benefits​

  • 🚀 JavaScript Configuration - Define infrastructure using a familiar, powerful programming language instead of limited HCL
  • 🔄 Automatic Backend Generation - Comet generates backend.tf.json files automatically based on your stack configuration
  • 🔗 Cross-Stack References - Simple state() template function to reference outputs from other stacks
  • 🔐 Built-in Secrets Management - Native SOPS integration for encrypted secrets in your configurations
  • 📦 Component Reusability - Define components once, reuse across environments with different configurations
  • 🎯 Multi-Environment Support - Manage dev, staging, production, and any other environments from a single codebase

Installation​

Prerequisites​

  • Go 1.23 or later
  • Terraform or OpenTofu installed

Building from Source​

git clone https://github.com/moonwalker/comet.git
cd comet
go build

This will create a comet binary in your current directory. You can move it to a directory in your PATH for easy access.

Quick Start​

1. Initialize Your Project​

Create a comet.yaml file in your project root:

executor: tofu  # or 'terraform'

2. Create Your First Stack​

Create a stack file at stacks/dev.stack.js:

// Define your stack
stack('dev', {
  project_name: 'my-app',
  region: 'us-central1'
})

// Configure backend
backend('gcs', {
  bucket: 'my-terraform-state',
  prefix: 'comet/{{ .stack }}/{{ .component }}'
})

// Define a simple component
const vpc = component('vpc', 'modules/vpc', {
  cidr_block: '10.0.0.0/16',
  region: '{{ .settings.region }}'
})

3. Create a Terraform Module​

Create a basic module at modules/vpc/main.tf:

variable "cidr_block" {
  type = string
}

variable "region" {
  type = string
}

resource "google_compute_network" "vpc" {
  name                    = "my-vpc"
  auto_create_subnetworks = false
}

output "id" {
  value = google_compute_network.vpc.id
}

4. Run Comet Commands​

# List available stacks
comet list

# Plan changes
comet plan dev vpc

# Apply changes
comet apply dev vpc

# View outputs
comet output dev vpc

Next Steps​

Getting Help​

For detailed command documentation, use:

comet --help
comet <command> --help

Visit our GitHub repository to report issues or contribute.