[Pkg-puppet-devel] Proposed Puppet installation changes

[Luke Kanies]

On Mar 16, 2009, at 9:42 PM, Todd Zullinger wrote:

> Greetings puppet packagers,
>
> I'm Todd.  I help maintain the puppet packages for Fedora and EPEL.  I
> found your names and addresses associated with puppet packages for
> various Linux distributions and other operating systems.  If I've
> included anyone mistakenly, please accept my apologies.  Likewise, if
> there is a better address to reach the packagers of puppet for your
> distribution/OS, I'd be happy to learn about it.

Should we have a puppet-packagers list or something?  This kind of  
problem has come up more than once.

It might also be ok to just put it on all puppet-dev and expect the  
packagers to monitor that list.

>
> With that out of the way, the reason for this message is to seek your
> opinions and help in making puppet's installation process a slight bit
> easier for packagers and administrators.
>
> The initial question I have is about the location of the system
> binaries and scripts.  Currently, the install.rb script in the puppet
> source release installs these in ruby's Config::CONFIG["bindir"]
> (typically /usr/bin on linux).  On many distributions, we prefer to
> place the daemons and other administrator binaries and scripts into
> Config::CONFIG["sbindir"] (typically /usr/sbin).
>
> I submitted a patch¹ to install several of the binaries/scripts in
> sbindir by default (puppetca, puppetd, and puppetmasterd, and
> puppetrun).  This matches what Debian does currently, I believe.
> Fedora is similar, though we are currently not installing puppetca in
> sbindir -- I think Debian is more consistent in that regard. ;)

I said so on the patches themselves, but I'm all for this change.  I  
even tried to make it a while ago but couldn't get the package system  
we were using at the time to work in short order so I gave up quickly.

>
> I think if we improve the puppet install script such that it is usable
> by more packagers, it might make all of our jobs just a bit easier.
> And if we choose sane defaults, we might even end up with less
> confusion for users who run multiple different operating systems.

I'll also say: The current install.rb essentially sucks.  It's barely  
maintained, I don't think anyone likes it, and the ruby community has  
better, simpler ways of managing this these days, I think.  If anyone  
feels passionately about installation and wants to rip this thing to  
shreds and replace it with something better, I'd love to see it.

-- 
I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth, and they thought
it was hell. -- Harry S Truman
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Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com