When working with salt 3006.5 and I’m trying to provision multi-line values from my pillar contents I get the following unhelpful error:

local:
    Data failed to compile:
----------
    Rendering SLS 'base:environment' failed: could not find expected ':'; line 100

---
[...]
            password: admin
          credentials:
            ssh:
              private: -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
the
quick    <======================
brown
fox

I’ve configured my pillar values like so:

docker:
  services:
    jenkins:
      credentials:
        ssh:
          private: |
            -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
            the
            quick
            brown
            fox

This value is then referenced in a yaml file serializer:

/usr/local/etc/.env-template.yaml:
  file.serialize:
    - dataset:
        jenkins:
          credentials:
            ssh:
              private:

It turns out for multi-line values you need to wrap the reference inside double quotes like so:

private: ""