Puppet users - Jul 2014 - Hiera/Puppet: How to handle different versions of applications in multiple environments?

Hello everybody.

I'm a developer new to puppet and are working with a complex system made up 
of several subsystems. We have regulatory requirements which forces us to 
have several production environments (at-least one per jurisdiction). This 
is causing us some pains.

The main problem is that the different jurisdictions "requires"
different
versions (and sometimes content) of the deployed applications. Due to a 
drawn out certification process some environments lags behind in versions 
by up to six month (that's how long it can take to get changes certified). 
Given that different environments require different versions of both puppet 
modules and application versions how do we handle this while still 
guaranteeing system integrity?

I'm in the process of trying out some other things, like the roles and 
profiles pattern. Looking at the 'version' properties in my example
below;
is it a good idea to keep it hardcoded and release a new version of the 
puppet module for each version of the software (order_service in this case) 
and assign those modules per environment or should I make the application 
versions a hiera variable as well? And if I do decide to keep versions in 
hiera how do I ensure that no-one (in ops) deploys a version that has not 
been integration-tested with the rest of the system?

Keeping versions in hiera would make everything much more dynamic but also 
so much more difficult to ensure consistency, especially in a Continuous 
Delivery workflow...

Any takers? What obvious thing did I miss?


**Example**
class role::app_server {
    include profile::base
    include profile::linux
    include profile::jboss
    include profile::order_service::webapp
}

class profile::order_service::webapp {
    class { 'order_webapp'
        version             => '3.1.2',
        db_address          => hiera('db_address'),
        etc...
    }
}

class profile::jboss {
    class { 'jbosseap':
        version             => 6.3,
        port                => hiera('port'),
        broadcast_address   => hiera('broadcast_address'),
        user_roles          => hiera('user_roles'),
        user_groups         => hiera('user_groups')
    }
    class { 'java'
        version             => '>=1.7.0'
    }
}


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