Puppet Module for Ruby Version Manager (RVM)

This module handles installing system RVM (also known as multi-user installation as root) and using it to install rubies and gems. Support for installing and configuring passenger is also included.

We are actively using this module. It works well, but does have some issues you should be aware of. Due to the way puppet works, certain resources (rvm_sytem_ruby, rvm_gem and rvm_gemset) may generate errors until RVM is installed. The puppet-rvm module uses run stages to install RVM before the rest of your configuration runs. However, if you run puppet using the --noop parameter, you may see Could not find a default provider errors. See the Troubleshooting section for more information.

Please read the troubleshooting section below before opening an issue.

System Requirements

Puppet 2.6.7 or higher.

Add Puppet Module

Before you begin, you must add the RVM module to your Puppet installation. This can be done with:

$ git clone git://github.com/blt04/puppet-rvm.git /etc/puppet/modules/rvm

Enable plugin synchronization for custom types. In your puppet.conf (usually in /etc/puppet) on both the Master and Client ensure you have:

[main]
    pluginsync = true

You may now continue configuring RVM resources.

Install RVM with Puppet

Install RVM with:

include rvm

or

class { 'rvm': version => '1.20.12' }

This will install RVM into /usr/local/rvm.

To use RVM without sudo, users need to be added to the rvm group. This can be easily done with:

rvm::system_user { bturner: ; jdoe: ; jsmith: ; }

NOTE: You must define a user elsewhere in your manifest to use rvm::system_user.

Installing Ruby

You can tell RVM to install one or more Ruby versions with:

rvm_system_ruby {
  'ruby-1.9.2-p290':
    ensure => 'present',
    default_use => true;
  'ruby-1.8.7-p357':
    ensure => 'present',
    default_use => false;
}

You should use the full version number. While the shorthand version may work (e.g. '1.9.2'), the provider will be unable to detect if the correct version is installed.

Creating Gemsets

Create a gemset with:

rvm_gemset {
  "ruby-1.9.2-p290@myproject":
    ensure => present,
    require => Rvm_system_ruby['ruby-1.9.2-p290'];
}

Installing Gems

Install a gem with:

rvm_gem {
  'ruby-1.9.2-p290@myproject/bundler':
    ensure => '1.0.21',
    require => Rvm_gemset['ruby-1.9.2-p290@myproject'];
}

The name of the gem should be <ruby-version>[@<gemset>]/<gemname>. For example, you can install bundler for ruby-1.9.2 using ruby-1.9.2-p290/bundler. You could install rails in your project's gemset with: ruby-1.9.2-p290@myproject/rails.

Alternatively, you can use this more verbose syntax:

rvm_gem {
  'bundler':
    name => 'bundler',
    ruby_version => 'ruby-1.9.2-p290',
    ensure => latest,
    require => Rvm_system_ruby['ruby-1.9.2-p357'];
}

Installing Passenger

Install passenger with:

class {
  'rvm::passenger::apache':
    version => '3.0.11',
    ruby_version => 'ruby-1.9.2-p290',
    mininstances => '3',
    maxinstancesperapp => '0',
    maxpoolsize => '30',
    spawnmethod => 'smart-lv2';
}

Building the module

To test and build the module

bundle install
# run specs
rake
# run tests with vagrant vms
rake integrate
# Release the Puppet module to the Forge, doing a clean, build, tag, push, bump_commit and git push
rake module:release

Troubleshooting / FAQ

An error "Could not find a default provider for rvm_system_ruby" is displayed when running Puppet with --noop

This means that puppet cannot find the /usr/local/rvm/bin/rvm command (probably because RVM isn't installed yet). Currently, Puppet does not support making a provider suitable using another resource (late-binding). The puppet-rvm module uses run stages to install RVM before the rest of the configuration runs. When running in noop mode, RVM is not actually installed causing rvm_system_ruby, rvm_gem and rvm_gemset resources to generate this error. You can avoid this error by surrounding your rvm configuration in an if block:

if $rvm_installed == "true" {
    rvm_system_ruby ...
}

Do not surround include rvm in the if block, as this is used to install RVM.

NOTE: $rvm_installed is evaluated at the beginning of each puppet run. If you use this in your manifests, you will need to run puppet twice to fully configure RVM.

An error "Resource type rvm_gem does not support parameter false" prevents puppet from running.

The RVM module requires Puppet version 2.6.7 or higher.

There is a bug in Puppet versions 2.7.4 through 2.7.9 that also causes this error. The error can be safely ignored in these versions. For best results, upgrade to Puppet 2.7.10.

Some packages/libraries I don't want or need are installed (e.g. build-essential, libc6-dev, libxml2-dev).

RVM works by compiling Ruby from source. This means you must have all the libraries and binaries required to compile Ruby installed on your system. I've tried to include these in manifests/classes/dependencies.rb.

It doesn't work on my operating system.

I've only tested this on Ubuntu 10.04 and Ubuntu 11.04. omarqureshi was kind enough to add CentOS support. Other operating systems may require different paths or dependencies. Feel free to send me a pull request ;)

Why didn't you just add an RVM provider for the existing package type?

The puppet package type seems like an obvious place for the RVM provider. It would be nice if the syntax for installing Ruby with RVM looked like:

# NOTE: This does not work
package {'ruby':
    provider => 'rvm',
    ensure => '1.9.2-p290';
}

While this may be possible, it becomes harder to manage multiple Ruby versions and nearly impossible to install gems for a specific Ruby version. For this reason, I decided it was best to create a completely new set of types for RVM.