[Puppet Users] Class parameter flexibility with ENC, hiera or both

Pablo Fernandez
2013-12-02T17:39:51Z

Dear puppetteers,

I am having a philosophical question about parametrized classes.
When building modules, one wants to be as flexible as possible, to try
to target as many puppet flavors as possible. This is our target:
- Foreman users, using foreman as an ENC with smart variables (or
potentially any other ENC, but I would say this is the most widespread one).
- Pure Puppet''s site.pp users with Hiera as the only data binding.

But let''s say that within mymodule there is a define mymodule::mydefine
that uses variable values from mymodule, let''s say
mymodule::parameter1.
I need to include mymodule to be able to use it, right? This is the example:

class mymodule (param1 = ''default_value'') {
}

define mymodule::mydefine () {
  include mymodule     ## just to make sure it was parsed before
  case (mymodule::param1) {blabla}
}

If you only use Hiera as a data backend, you''re good: if you need to
override parameter1, you do it in the hierarchy, and the include does
not disturb you. But if you want to target also an ENC, you are screwed:

classes:
  mymodule:
    param1: ''value''

ENC''s way to pass class parameters (if I am not mistaken) is the
classic
"class {mymodule: param1 => ''value''}", and when
the define does the
include without parameters, an error would come for mixing parametrized
and not parametrized inclusions.

The problem really comes because I need a variable from another class
(in the same module, though)... but:
- Is it possible to force the parsing order so that I don''t need to use
the include inside the define?
- Or is it possible to have the ENC push parameters the "Hiera" way
instead of the "Classic" way, so that both includes are equivalent?


Thanks a lot,
Pablo Fernandez


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