If you’re using CloudFormation, you probably know about cfn-lint - a
linting tool created by the CloudFormation team to validate templates against the schema and best practices. Validating
each template before deployment is in itself actually
considered a best practice by AWS.
However, simply using validate-template in the Console or CLI only validates the basic syntax of the template, not the
actual contents and resource specification. That’s where using a linter like cfn-lint
can be helpful to make sure you’re not making any obvious mistakes or going against best practices in your resources.
You can use cfn-lint in a number of ways during development, including simply within command-line, using git pre-commit
hooks or as a plugin to your IDE. All those options, while helpful in day-to-day work, do not establish code quality
standards for your overall codebase. To do that, it’s ideal to include linting as part of CI/CD pipeline and/or
pull/merge-requests approval process.
That is where you can come across a hurdle: cfn-lint does not have an official, up-to-date docker image
