Is Debian a second class operating system for Puppet?

[bastelfreak]

For the past years it was always a problem to get packages for Debian. Debian 12 got released in June last year. The puppet-agent package got published a few weeks ago. Bolt, PDK, PuppetDB, Puppetserver are still missing.

Why?

And I asked on slack about PuppetDB and Puppetserver and why they weren't published together with the Agent. The response was basically and all three are maintained by different teams and the last effort was only about the agent. PuppetDB and Puppetserver have to to requested separately. As a user that's really not a sufficient answer. The Debian release dates aren't a secret. Debian even communicates them in advance and provides beta/rc images so people can work early on supporting them.

• Debian 12 agent was published around 9 months after Debian 12 release
• CentOS Stream 9 support was published as puppet agent 7.14, released in January 2022, 4 month after CentOS Stream 9 release (which I think is already quite long)

Also there's a serious packaging bug for Debian packages. It is known since years but nobody cares to fix it. That just makes upgrades so so complicated. It was reported in 2019: https://puppet.atlassian.net/browse/CPR-699. And it's still a problem: https://puppet.atlassian.net/browse/CPR-861 / https://puppet.atlassian.net/browse/PA-4995.

And one last thing: Multiple times I heard from Puppet employees

Debian/Ubuntu do not have a high priority because we don't see many users

• How do you measure this?
• How do you expect to gain any Debian/Ubuntu users when they are treated like this? You won't get users when you don't offer packages.

[bastelfreak]

Another reason why it feels like Debian is a second class OS: puppet-release-bookworm.deb is missing at https://apt.puppet.com/.

[joshcooper]

There are stream specific release packages for bookworm at:

https://apt.puppet.com/puppet7-release-bookworm.deb
https://apt.puppet.com/puppet8-release-bookworm.deb

I think there's some debate as to whether having release packages (like puppet-release-bookworm.deb) that install the latest major version are a good idea. Pretty sure, that'll lead to a "bad time".

[evgeni]

Sure, but it's inconsistent when some Debian/Ubuntu versions have it, and some not.

[bastelfreak]

I think there's some debate as to whether having release packages

probably. But it was never communicated that those packages won't be provided anymore and now it's inconsistent. And beaker has a function to test against latest puppet. In that case it will use those deb/rpm packages to get the latest major version. I don't mind it if they disappear, but then it would be nice if that information is published anywhere.

[binford2k]

@joshcooper is actually working on a build system change that should make it easier for you to build packages for platforms we haven't gotten to yet (Arch, even 😉), and even to contribute those upstream. It's too early to promise anything, it might not even end up working out. But watch for improvements soon!

[Valantin]

On my organization we are migrating all to ubuntu 22.04 and debian 12 to be compliant with our IT resource usage policy but we are stuck with the puppetserver because of this latency in the release.

Can I help in some way to do a bust to release?

[tuxmea]

Any update or feedback? @davidsandilands

[davidsandilands]

Hello, we have been reviewing OS support on PDK, we were behind in all honesty with a few surprising omissions, our ticket to add PDK packages for debian 12 closed last week so you should expect it shortly.

I will be looking to confirm better support lifecycles for tooling so we are far more predictable.

[bastelfreak]

Thanks for the work/fast feedback! Do you also have updates on PuppetDB/Puppetserver packages?

• Missing Puppet packages for Debian 12 (Bookworm) puppetdb#3950
• Missing Puppet packages for Debian 12 (Bookworm) puppetserver#2837