Jira (PUP-7430) Removal of Rgen methods breaks third party tools

Corey Osman (JIRA)

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Apr 5, 2017, 11:24:02 PM4/5/17

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Corey Osman created an issue

Puppet /

PUP-7430

Removal of Rgen methods breaks third party tools

Issue Type:	Bug
Affects Versions:	PUP 5.0.0
Assignee:	Unassigned
Created:	2017/04/05 8:23 PM
Priority:	Normal
Reporter:	Corey Osman

I am the author of puppet-retrospec (https://github.com/nwops/puppet-retrospec) which is a fairly popular tool for automating module content including rspec-puppet tests.

Puppet 5 removes the Rgen related code and puppet-retrospec relies heavily on these methods to find patterns in code.

In Puppet 4 the eContainer method allowed retrospec to perform a deep inspection of code by looking forward and backward to calculate puppet coding patterns. This was a huge benefit over the old Puppet 3 AST model.

Without the eContainer method the puppet-retrospec gem will not work in the current form. This would cause me to rewrite a major portion of the retrospec gem which I will probably not do as I too many other things to do, and I just rewrote it to use puppet 4 parser last year.

My current work around is to just vendor the 4.x gem like I am currently doing, but eventually this will need to change if there are significant feature changes / additions in puppet 5.

I understand this is a tricky situation, you need to remove what was seen as unused code (Rgen) in order to move the platform forward which is totally fine, but I would like to see some sort of replacement for what was removed.

I don't think 3rd party tools should have to implement their own lexer / parser tooling for the puppet language when the puppet library comes with an awesome one already. Third party tools should be able to utilize the lexer / parser API built into puppet without fear of breaking changes.

For example the puppet-lint tool uses it's own lexer which is good because puppet 5 will not break it. However, the puppet-lint lexer also suffers from lack of puppet 4 support and any future additions to the puppet language will require more work. So really it is a huge burden for the tool maker to keep their own lexer current. Especially, when puppet ships with one.

What I would like to see:

1, A separate gem for 3rd party tooling, with Rgen, supported integration API, docs and examples
2. Put rgen back into puppet 5
3. Rewrite the broken code in retrospec-puppet and other gems

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Corey Osman (JIRA)

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Apr 6, 2017, 1:12:02 PM4/6/17

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Corey Osman updated an issue

Puppet /

PUP-7430

Removal of Rgen methods breaks third party tools

Change By:	Corey Osman

I am the author of puppet-retrospec (https://github.com/nwops/puppet-retrospec) which is a fairly popular tool for automating module content including rspec-puppet tests.

Puppet 5 removes the Rgen related code and puppet-retrospec relies heavily on these methods to find patterns in code.

In Puppet 4 the eContainer method allowed retrospec to perform a deep inspection of code by looking forward and backward to calculate puppet coding patterns. This was a huge benefit over the old Puppet 3 AST model.

Without the eContainer method the puppet-retrospec gem will not work in the current form. This would cause me to rewrite a major portion of the retrospec gem which I will probably not do as I have too many other things to do, and I just rewrote it to use puppet 4 parser last year.

My current work around is to just vendor the 4.x gem like I am currently doing, but eventually this will need to change if there are significant feature changes / additions in puppet 5.

I understand this is a tricky situation, you need to remove what was seen as unused code (Rgen) in order to move the platform forward which is totally fine, but I would like to see some sort of replacement for what was removed.

I don't think 3rd party tools should have to implement their own lexer / parser tooling for the puppet language when the puppet library comes with an awesome one already. Third party tools should be able to utilize the lexer / parser API built into puppet without fear of breaking changes.

For example the puppet-lint tool uses it's own lexer which is good because puppet 5 will not break it. However, the puppet-lint lexer also suffers from lack of puppet 4 support and any future additions to the puppet language will require more work. So really it is a huge burden for the tool maker to keep their own lexer current. Especially, when puppet ships with one.

What I would like to see:

1, A separate gem for 3rd party tooling, with Rgen, supported integration API, docs and examples
2. Put rgen back into puppet 5

3. Rewrite the broken code in retrospec-puppet and other gems ;)