How do you handle patch versions with puppet?

Question

We use vagrant with puppet. Now there is a question about setting the version of different applications.

How specific do you ensure versions with puppet? For example mysql: Do you ensure to have version 5.5 or even more specific like 5.5.35? What is the best approach? Whats your experience?

Answer 1

It depends on how you manage your software.

The most suitable way is using packages in your OS's favourite format, e.g. rpm or deb.

On Debian, this would be a way to make Puppet install a specific version:

package {
  "mysql-server-5.5":
    ensure => "5.5.35";
}

In Puppet up to and including 3.x, the desired version is used as a value for the ensure property. In the future, there will likely be a version property instead.