Can I install puppet modules through puppet manifest?

Question

Primary goal is to add all puppet modules automatically, so that all dev-env's and prod-env could be started with one command. How can I install puppet modules through puppet manifest?

Answer 1

We've been happily using librarian-puppet to sync all 3rd party modules, it supports setting the modules' locations and versions. So production and dev run the exact same code. The usage is one liner

librarian-puppet install

In other cases we have a shell script that runs puppet two times, one time a minimal module that is only responsible for fetching the required modules, and then the full blown puppet flow when all modules are available.

Answer 2

The "Puppet module" type and provider does exactly that:

module { 'author/mymodule':
  ensure   => present,
}
module { 'puppetlabs/stdlib':
  ensure => '2.6.0',
}
module { 'puppetlabs/stdlib':
  ensure     => present,
  modulepath => '/etc/puppet/modules',
}

Recent versions of Puppet also have a puppet module command that allows you to install arbitrary Puppet modules from the Puppet forge, example:

$ puppet module install rcoleman/puppet_module
Notice: Preparing to install into /home/anarcat/.puppet/modules ...
Notice: Created target directory /home/anarcat/.puppet/modules
Notice: Downloading from https://forgeapi.puppetlabs.com ...
Notice: Installing -- do not interrupt ...
/home/anarcat/.puppet/modules
└── rcoleman-puppet_module (v0.0.3)

Other alternatives include:

• librarian
• r10k (cited as a replacement for librarian), supports dynamic environments and much more

r10k is now part of Puppet Entreprise 2015.03, so it can certainly be considered best practice.