Puppetfile in Yaml or Json format ?

[mvisonneau]

Hi there,

I was wondering if it could be considered in the future to define the Puppet file into an other format than the Ruby DSL ?

For instance :

---
forge: "http://forge.puppetlabs.com"
modules:
  "puppetlabs/apache":
    version: 1.4.0
  "puppetlabs/stdlib":
    version: 4.2.0
  "nrpe":
    source: "https://github.com/mvisonneau/puppet-module-nrpe.git"
    version: "facfebef7be29bc29a5b0611f4a5aae570f7ff08"

I think this will help the management of huge Puppetfiles.

[adrienthebo]

Considered? Yes, definitely. Is it a high priority right now? Not terribly, since there's not been a lot of demand for this. Could you elaborate a bit on how a different file format would impact the management of huge Puppetfiles?

[mvisonneau]

Well I am planning to develop an interface in order to manage required modules. It would be much nicer to be able to work with a yaml/json file rather than the ruby DSL :)
Moreover I find it easier to read than the ruby dsl too.

[adrienthebo]

Given that the Puppetfile is Ruby, you can also just write a method that reads a YAML file and generates data as needed:

require 'yaml'
datapath = File.expand_path("modules.yaml", File.join(__FILE__, ".."))
data = YAML.load_file(datapath)

forge data["forge"]

data["modules"].each_pair do |name, settings|
  mod name, settings["version"]
end

While it would be nice to have this in core at some point, there's nothing stopping you from implementing something like this right now.

[mvisonneau]

great idea, thanks for the tip. I will give it a shot