Puppet

In Gentoo, you can normally specify package names as either an unqualified name, e.g. “par”, as long as that is unambiguous, or as a qualified name with the category, e.g. “app-text/par”. However, the package type in Puppet does not support that syntax. Instead you must use the special parameter ‘category’. I.e, you can’t do:

package { "app-text/par": ensure => installed; }

but have to write

package { "par": category => "app-text", ensure => installed; }

Being able to use the normal Gentoo syntax for names would be more natural and convenient. It would for example make it possible to pass around qualified package names in variables, or specifying lists of packages to the package type. If I for example want to do something like this:

$pkglist = [ "app-text/par", "dev-haskell/parsec" ]
package { $pkglist: ensure => installed; }

I can’t do that. (In the above examples, I have deliberately chosen packages that are ambiguous when not specifying the category, by the way.)

The attached patch makes it possible to specify the package category as part of the name. It is still possible to use unqualified names, or use the category parameter.

Specifying a category both as part of the name and with the category parameter leads to an error: “No package found with the specified name [app-text/app-text/par]”. The error message is perhaps not the best, but you would get the exact same message without it.