dependency-management.md

Dependency management

• Prefer require to before.

• Don't break encapsulation. In particular, a resource within one module should not create a dependency (require or notify) to a resource deep within another. For example, File[/etc/nginx/sites-available/foo] from module foo should not directly notify Service[nginx] in module nginx. Instead consider these options:

• use contain in modules to ensure dependencies are inherited to contained classes correctly, and specify the dependency at the top level. In our example, this means we would have:

  class {'foo': notify => Class['nginx']}
  class {'nginx':}
  

• create a defined type within one module which other modules can use which will set up the correct dependencies. See nginx::config::site for an example -- this is a defined type which allows other modules to create an nginx configuration and will make sure it happens after nginx::package and before nginx::service, without the other module even knowing the existence of these classes.

• When a class includes or instantiates another class, consider whether you should use contain instead of include or class. See the Puppet documentation. If class a contains class b then any resource relationships made to class a also apply to class b.