Install and configure TaskCat on Microsoft Windows 10

Host github.com
     HostName github.com
     User git
     PreferredAuthentications publickey
     IdentityFile /home/<example>/.ssh/id_rsa

export PATH="~/.pyenv/bin:$PATH"
eval "$(pyenv init -)"
eval "$(pyenv virtualenv-init -)"

$(which python|grep pyenv > /dev/null 2>&1)
PYENV_TEST=$?
if [[ $PYENV_TEST -eq 1 ]]
then
                echo "initialising pyenv"
                        eval "$(pyenv init -)"
   fi

5. Press Esc.
6. Enter :wq and press Enter.
7. Close the Ubuntu terminal window and open a new one.

Install Python 3.8.3

1. Install Python 3.8.3.

$ pyenv install 3.8.3

2. Set the default Python version to 3.8.3.

$ pyenv global 3.8.3

3. Verify that Python version 3.8.3 is the default version.

$ pyenv versions

The current default version displays.

system
* 3.8.3 (set by /home/<user>/.pyenv/version)

4. Upgrade pip packages.

$ python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip

5. Install the testresources extension to python unittest, to allow declarative use of resources by test cases.

$ pip install testresources

Install and configure AWS CLI

1. TaskCat uses AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). Run the following command to install the AWS CLI.

$ sudo apt install awscli

2. Configure your AWS CLI installation.

$ aws configure

3. The AWS CLI prompts you for the following information. Replace the sample values in the example with your own values. For more information about access keys, see Access key ID and secret access key.

AWS Access Key ID [None]: <AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE>
AWS Secret Access Key [None]: <wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY>
Default region name [us-east-1]: <us-east-1>
Default output format [json]: <json>

Note: A misspelled Region prevents successful connection to your AWS account. Confirm that the Region is entered correctly by running cat $HOME/.aws/config.

4. Test your AWS account connectivity.

$ aws sts get-caller-identity

The command returns the AWS access key ID (UserId), AWS account number (Account), and Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of your AWS account. In the following example output, your IAM user name displays in place of <example>.

{
“UserId”: “AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE”,
“Account”: “01234567890”,
“Arn”: “arn:aws:iam::01234567890:user/<example>”
}

You have now configured a Linux environment on Windows 10.

Step 2: Install Docker Desktop

1. Download and install Docker Desktop for Windows.
2. Install and configure the Docker Desktop WSL 2 backend.

Step 3: Install TaskCat and Python library for Docker Engine API

1. Install TaskCat.

$ pip install taskcat

2. Install the Python library for the Docker Engine API.

$ pip install docker

3. Test the TaskCat installation.

$ taskcat test run

The TaskCat version displays.

Step 4: Test the installation

Clone the test repo

1. In the Ubuntu terminal, change to the home directory.

$ cd $HOME

2. Clone the quickstart-microsoft-rdgateway repository.

$ git clone ssh://github.com/aws-quickstart/quickstart-microsoft-rdgateway

3. Change to the repository root directory.

$ cd $HOME/quickstart-microsoft-rdgateway

4. Update the repository submodules.

$ git submodule update --init --recursive --progress

Configure TaskCat to use your key pair

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Key Pairs. Note the name of the key pair to use to create the RD Gateway stack.
3. Run the following, replacing <example> with your key pair name.

$ echo \
KeyPairName: <example>> $HOME/quickstart-microsoft-rdgateway/.taskcat_overrides.yml

4. Open .taskcat.yml in the Vim editor.

$ vim .taskcat.yml

5. Enter –overridden– for the KeyPairName parameter. This ensures that the deployment reads the key pair name from .taskcat_overrides.yml.

Specify a single deployment Region for the test

1. TaskCat deploys templates into every Region listed in the regions section of .taskcat.yml. To reduce the time and cost of our test deployment, delete all Regions except for us-east-1.

Note: Remember to add Regions back to the regions section of .taskcat.yml to test your templates across multiple Regions.

2. Press Esc.
3. Enter :wq and press Enter.

Deploy the test templates with TaskCat

1. Run TaskCat.

taskcat test run -lmk -t rdgwMaster

2. Open the AWS CloudFormation console. On the Stacks page, the tCaT-quickstart-microsoft-rdgateway-rdgwMaster stack created by TaskCat displays. In the Status column, CREATE_COMPLETE indicates a successful test deployment. Stack creation takes about 30 minutes.

Now that TaskCat is installed and configured, you can repeat the walkthrough with your repositories to test AWS CloudFormation templates on Windows 10.

Cleanup

To avoid incurring future charges, delete the resources created by the walkthrough. Follow these steps:

1. Open the AWS CloudFormation console.
2. On the Stacks page, select the tCaT-quickstart-microsoft-rdgateway-rdgwMaster stack.
3. Choose Delete.

Conclusion

In this post, we explained how to install TaskCat on Windows 10 using WSL 2. TaskCat automates CloudFormation template testing and removes resources that are created so you don’t accrue charges after a test. Although it’s not natively supported on Windows, you can use TaskCat to test your CloudFormation templates on Windows 10 using the process we’ve explained. We invite you to perform the walkthrough and incorporate TaskCat in your CloudFormation template development. Let us know your experiences using TaskCat configured on Windows 10 in the comments.