[Puppet-dev] Specifying an implementation

[Luke Kanies]

I've progressed well in my implementation of, um, implementations --  
I'm now starting services, after getting packages basically working  
(I haven't tested them everywhere, but the structure is clearly  
working).

However, one of the things about implementations is that we expect  
users to need to be able to choose a specific one.  For instance,  
people could choose to install a package via gems or apt on debian.

For services and packages, I've created a 'type' parameter which can  
be used to specify the appropriate implementation.  I want this  
parameter to be something like 'ensure' is becoming -- a standard way  
of talking about a given thing (ensure talks about existence, type  
talks about implementation).

I can stick to 'type', and make it standard for those types that use  
implementation, but is there a better term for it?  'implementation'  
is clearly too long, and 'impl' is just lame (although that's what  
I'm using for the class name).

Also, files have a read-only 'type' parameter that I'll have to  
change, which will be a bit of a chore but not too bad.

If I use something other than 'type', we'll have to go through a  
migration with services and packages, but I'd rather change it now  
than in a couple of months.

Any ideas?

-- 
Luke Kanies
http://madstop.com | http://reductivelabs.com | 615-594-8199