[Pkg-puppet-devel] Bug#528737: no easy way to 'pre-notify' or combine before and require

[Jayen Ashar]

Package: puppet
Version: 0.24.7-2
Severity: wishlist

Hi, I'm running debian, and I'd like to preconfigure packages before installing 
them.  I was hoping there was a way to do this with before/require and 
subscribe/notify, but it gives a dependency cycle error.

What I would like is for something like this:
  exec {
    "echo -e nullmailer      shared/mailname string  maths.unsw.edu.au\nnullmailer      nullmailer/adminaddr    string  jayen at science.unsw.edu.au\nnullmailer      nullmailer/relayhost    string  smtp.unsw.edu.au\n | debconf-set-selections":
      path => "/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin",
      before => Package[nullmailer],
      subscribe => Package[nullmailer];
  }
  package {
    "nullmailer": ensure => installed;
  }

to become something like this:
  if package nullmailer is installed
    do nothing
  else
    notify subscribed exec type
      exec preconfiguration
    install package

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers oldstable
  APT policy: (500, 'oldstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.24-etchnhalf.1-686-bigmem
Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages puppet depends on:
ii  adduser                3.102             Add and remove users and groups
ii  facter                 1.3.5-1           a library for retrieving facts fro
ii  libopenssl-ruby        1.0.0+ruby1.8.2-1 OpenSSL interface for Ruby
ii  libshadow-ruby1.8      1.4.1-7           Interface of shadow password for R
ii  libxmlrpc-ruby         1.8.2-1           XML-RPC support for Ruby
ii  lsb-base               3.1-23.2etch1     Linux Standard Base 3.1 init scrip
ii  ruby                   1.8.2-1           An interpreter of object-oriented 

Versions of packages puppet recommends:
pn  libaugeas-ruby1.8             <none>     (no description available)
ii  rdoc                          1.8.2-1    Generate documentation from ruby s

-- no debconf information