Welcome back again to the Puppet release cycle with really truly next to final release candidate 4.
The 2.6.0 release is a major feature release and includes a huge variety of new features, fixes, updates and enhancements. These include the complete cut-over from XMLRPC to the REST API, numerous language enhancements, a complete rewrite of the events and reporting system, an internal Ruby DSL, a single binary, Windows support, a new HTTP report processor, and a myriad of other enhancements. As a result of the bucket-load of new features and enhancements we also need lots of help testing it. Please run up the release candidate in your test environment or using VMs and test it as extensively as possible. We've include release notes below that you can also see at: http://projects.puppetlabs.com/projects/puppet/wiki/Release_Notes The release candidate is available for download at: http://puppetlabs.com/downloads/puppet/puppet-2.6.0rc4.tar.gz Please note that all final releases of Puppet are signed with the Puppet Labs key (we'll sign the production release with the new, improved Puppet Labs key). See the Verifying Puppet Download section at http://projects.puppetlabs.com/projects/puppet/wiki/Downloading_Puppet Please test this release candidate and report feedback via the Puppet Labs Redmine site: http://projects.puppetlabs.com Please select an affected version of 2.6.0rc4. RELEASE NOTES Language Support for parameterised classes The 2.6.0 release provides an extension to the existing class syntax to allow parameters to be passed to classes. This brings classes more in line with definitions, with the significant difference that definitions have multiple instances whilst classes remain singletons. To create a class with parameters you can now specify: class apache($version) { ... class contents ... } Classes with parameters are NOT added using the include function but rather the resulting class can then be included more like a definition: node webserver { class { apache: version => "1.3.13" } } Like definitions, you can also specify default parameter values in your class like so: class apache($version="1.3.13",$home="/var/www") { ... class contents ... } New relationship syntax You can now specify relationships directly in the language: File[/foo] -> Service[bar] Specifies a normal dependency while: File[/foo] ~> Service[bar] Specifies a subscription. You can also do relationship chaining, specifying multiple relationships on a single line: File[/foo] -> Package[baz] -> Service[bar] Note that while it’s confusing, you don’t have to have all of the arrows be the same direction: File[/foo] -> Service[bar] <~ Package[baz] This can provide some succinctness at the cost of readability. You can also specify full resources, rather than just resource references: file { "/foo": ensure => present } -> package { bar: ensure => installed } But wait! There’s more! You can also specify a subscription on either side of the relationship marker: yumrepo { foo: .... } package { bar: provider => yum, ... } Yumrepo <| |> -> Package <| provider == yum |> This, finally, provides easy many to many relationships in Puppet, but it also opens the door to massive dependency cycles. This last feature is a very powerful stick, and you can considerably hurt yourself with it. Run Stages Run Stages are a way for you to provide coarse-grained ordering in your manifests without having to specify relationships to every resource you want in a given order. It’s most useful for setup work that needs to be done before the vast majority of your catalog even works – things like configuring yum repositories so your package installs work. Run Stages are currently (intentionally) a bit limited – you can only put entire classes into a run stage, you can’t put individual resources there. There’s a main stage that resources all exist in by default; if you don’t use run stages, everything’s in this, but it doesn’t matter to you. You can define new stages via the new stage resource type: stage { pre: before => Stage[main] } Here we’ve used the before metaparameter but you could also use after, require, etc to establish the necessary relationships between stages. Now you just specify that your class belongs in your new run stage: class yum { ... } class redhat { ... class { yum: stage => pre } } This will make sure that all of the resources in the yum are applied before the main stage is applied. Note that we’re using the new parameterized classes here – this is necessary because of the class-level limitations of Run Stages. These limitations are present because of the complication of trying to untangle resource dependencies across stage boundaries if we allowed arbitrary resources to specify stages. On a related note, if you specify a stage for a given class, you should specify as few as possible explicit relationships to or from that class. Otherwise you risk a greater chance of dependency cycles. This can all be visualized relatively easily using the —graph option to puppetd and opening the graphs in OmniGraffle or GraphViz. Specifying the ordering of Run Stages also works much better when specified using the new relationship syntax, too: stage { [pre, post]: } Stage[pre] -> Stage[main] -> Stage[post] This way it’s very easy to see at a glance exactly how the stages are ordered. Support for hashes in the DSL This brings a new container syntax to the Puppet DSL: hashes. Hashes are defined like Ruby Hashes: { key1 => val1, ... } The Hash keys are strings but hash values can be any possible right values admitted in Puppet DSL (i.e. a function call or a variable) Currently it is possible: * to assign hashes to a variable $myhash = { key1 => "myval", key2 => $b } * to access hash members (recursively) from a variable containing a hash (works for array too): $myhash = { key => { subkey => "b" }} notice($myhash[key][subkey]] * to use hash member access as resource title * to use hash in default definition parameter or resource parameter if the type supports it (known for the moment). It is not possible to use an hash as a resource title. This might be possible once we support compound resource title. Support for an elsif syntax Allows use of an elsif construct: if $server == 'mongrel' { include mongrel } elsif $server == 'nginx' { include nginx } else { include thin } Case and Selectors now support undef The case and selector statements now support the undef syntax (see #2818). Pure Ruby Manifests Puppet now supports pure Ruby manifests as equivalent to Puppet’s custom language. That is, you can now have Ruby programs along side your Puppet manifests. As is our custom, it’s a limited first version, but it covers most of the specification functionality of the current language. For instance, here’s a simple ssh class: hostclass :ssh do package "ssh", :ensure => :present file "/etc/ssh/sshd_config", :source => "puppet:///ssh/sshd_config", :require => "Package[ssh]" service :sshd, :ensure => :running, :require => "File[/etc/ssh/sshd_config]" end Similar to the ‘hostclass’ construct here, you can specify defined resource types: define "apache::vhost", :ip, :docroot, :modperl => false do file "/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/#...@name}.conf", :content => template("apache/vhost.erb") end As you can see from this code, the parameters for the resources become instance variables inside of the defined resource types (and classes, now that we support parameterized classes). We can do nodes, too: node “mynode” do include “apache” end Ruby has become a first-class citizen alongside the existing external DSL. That means anywhere you can put a manifest, you should be able to put Ruby code and have it behave equivalently. So, the ‘ssh’ class above could be put into ‘$modules/ssh/manifests/init.rb’, the apache vhost type should be placed in ‘$modules/apache/manifests/vhost.rb’, and the node should probably be in your ‘site.pp’ file. You can also apply Ruby manifests directly with puppet: puppet -e mystuff.rb Note that the Ruby support does not yet cover all of the functionality in Puppet’s language. For instance, there is not yet support for overrides or defaults, nor for resource collections. Virtual and exported resources are done using a separate method: virtual file("/my/file", :content => "something") All of the standard functions are also pulled into Ruby and should work fine — e.g., ‘include’, ‘template’, and ‘require’. Stored Configuration Support is now added for using Oracle databases as a back-end for your stored configuration. Facts There are three new facts available in manifests: $clientcert – the name of the client certificate $module_name – the name of the current module (see #1545) $caller_module_name – the name of the calling module (see #1545) In addition all puppet.conf configuration items are now available as facts in your manifests. These can be accessed using the structure: $settings::setting_name Where setting_name is the name of the configuration option you’d like to retrieve. Types and Providers A new provider for pkg has been added to support Solaris and OpenSolaris (pkgadd). A new package provider has been added to support AIX package management. The augeas type has added the ‘incl’ and ‘lens’ parameters. These parameters allow loading a file anywhere on the filesystem; using them also greatly speeds up processing the resource. Binaries and Configuration Single Binary Puppet is now available as a single binary with sub-arguments for the functions previously provided by the seperate binaries (the existing binaries remain for backwards compatibility). This includes renaming several Puppet functions to better fit an overall model. List of binary changes puppetmasterd –> puppet master puppetd –> puppet agent puppet –> puppet apply puppetca –> puppet cert ralsh –> puppet resource puppetrun –> puppet kick puppetqd –> puppet queue filebucket –> puppet filebucket puppetdoc –> puppet doc pi –> puppet describe This also results in a change in the puppet.conf configuration file. The sections, previously things like [puppetd], now should be renamed to match the new binary names. So [puppetd] becomes [agent]. You will be prompted to do this when you start Puppet with a log message for each section that needs to be renamed. This is merely a warning - existing configuration file will work unchanged. New options A new option is available, ca_name, to specify the name to use for the Certificate Authority certificate. It defaults to the value of the certname option (see http://projects.reductivelabs.com/issues/1507). A new option, dbconnections, is now available that specifies a limit for the number of database connections made to remote databases (postgreSQL, MySQL). A new option, dbport, is now available that specifies the database port for remote database connections. There’s also a new option/feature that lets the puppet client use HTTP compression (—http_compression): Allow http compression in REST communication with the master. This setting might improve performance for agent –> master communications over slow WANs. Your puppetmaster needs to support compression (usually by activating some settings in a reverse-proxy in front of the puppetmaster, which rules out webrick). It is harmless to activate this settings if your master doesn’t support compression, but if it supports it, this setting might reduce on high-speed LANs. Binary changes The puppetd (or puppet agent) binary now supports the --detailed-exitcodes option available in the puppet binary. Certificates cleaned with puppetca (or puppet cert) are now also revoked. The puppetca (puppet cert) and puppetd (puppet agent) binaries now have support for certificate fingerprinting and support for specifying digest algorithms. To display the fingerprint of a client certificate use: $ puppetd --fingerprint or $ puppet agent --fingerprint To specify a particular digest algorithm use --digest DIGESTNAME. To fingerprint a certificate with puppetca use: $ puppetca --fingerprint host.example.com or $ puppet cert --fingerprint host.example.com Also supported is the --digest option. The puppetdoc binary now documents inheritance between nodes, shows classes added via the require function and resources added via the realize function. Functions The regsubst function now takes arrays as input (see #2491). Reports There is a new report type called http. If you specify: reports = http Then the new report processor will make a HTTP POST of the report in YAML format to a specified URL. By default this URL is the report import URL for a local Puppet Dashboard installation. You can override this with the new reporturl setting. reports = http reporturl = http://yoururl/post/ CHANGELOG since RC3 cf597d7 [#4233] Ruby regexps are not multiline by default, but Resource titles can be multilined6cbb21 Fix for #4234 -- ruby DSL fails on second resource 4822de3 Fix for #4236 -- Only interpolate $ if followed by a variable b509032 Fix #4238 - if should match undef as '' 8c8c146 Minimal fix for #4243 -- import isn't thread safe d319da4 [#4247] storeconfigs was calling Puppet::Parser::Resource.new with the wrong arguments 9f91540 [#4256] External nodes parameters can now be assigned to nodes 680dd1a Fix for #4257 -- problems resolving ::-prefixed classes 6e07a19 Fix #4262 - Puppetmaster used to log compilation time 5b68afe Fix for #4255 -- misleading diagnostic message dd03ac9 Partial fix for #4278 -- the performance aspects 4ce33fd Fixed #4249 - Updated SUSE packaging specifications 91185c6 New man pages for 2.6.0 1cda7c5 Fixes errant Trac references in documentation Regards James Turnbull -- Puppet Labs - http://www.puppetlabs.com C: 503-734-8571 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Users" group. 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