Puppet

Can you provide some examples of runs with —debug —verbose —trace please.

It’s pretty easy to see. Here’s the relevant snippet from my config.

package { 'activesupport': ensure => '2.3.8', provider => gem}

I went and manually installed 3.0.4:

# gem list activesupport *** LOCAL GEMS *** activesupport (3.0.4, 2.3.8)

Here’s the relevant bits from the log:

debug: Package[activesupport](provider=gem): Executing '/opt/local/bin/gem install -v 2.3.8 --include-dependencies activesupport' notice: /Stage[main]/Production::Packages/Package[activesupport]/ensure: ensure changed '3.0.4' to '2.3.8'

Obviously doesn’t tell us much we don’t already know.

the problem only manifests if there’s a newer version than the requested one also installed. See self.gemsplit in lib/puppet/provider/package/gem.rb

An interim solution might be to have the provider call “gem list —installed —version X gemname” to help it decide if something is extant.

Realistically, a proper solution requires a major refactoring to the provider so that it understands that there can be multiple versions of a single package installed and should include the ability to purge versions which are not defined as being installed. i.e.

package {'somegem': ensure => ['1.1.0', '1.0.0'], provider => :gem}

It would guarantee that only those two versions are installed (i.e. it would remove 1.2.0).

Gem are the worst for this, I think, because lazy developers create ridiculous, and impossible to manage dependency trees.

This is fixed in 2.6.9.

This has not been fixed, reopening.

This was merged in commit:e415daa44d80c15035bbe837f02134e8776b46bc

Released in Puppet 2.7.12rc1