Issue #16245 has been updated by eric sorenson. Status changed from Unreviewed to Investigating Assignee set to eric sorenson
I have seen this too (though your :8080 example is pretty baffling). Everything in Puppet's a string, except for a few things that aren't, and those will be type-coerced inside of puppet itself -- so turning off the automatic typing in your YAML emitter is definitely a safer way to go. I'll investigate whether there is something special about the `:8080` that makes the `:` get stripped off; that would be a legitimate bug. ---------------------------------------- Bug #16245: ENC output is sometimes internalized with variables as the wrong types (str becomes int, etc) https://projects.puppetlabs.com/issues/16245#change-70837 Author: Andrew Kesterson Status: Investigating Priority: Normal Assignee: eric sorenson Category: Target version: Affected Puppet version: 2.7.10 Keywords: Branch: We have an ENC that provides output in YAML format, and works 99.9% of the time. We appear to have discovered a bug in the puppet YAML parser (or, rather, whatever library puppet may be using to parse its YAML from the ENC). Our ENC is written in python, all data is stored in JSON internally, and it uses the pyyaml library to dump its output. In this case, here is what we EXPECT to happen (in pseudocode): In our ENC, define a string called "port": {"port": ":8080"} ENC provides output as YAML port: ':8080' puppet consumes ENC output puppet says "That looks like a string" puppet creates a global variable $port = ':8080' Unfortunately, here's what's REALLY happening: in our ENC, define a string called port: {"port": ":8080"} ENC provides output as YAML, but pyyaml fails to quote the string (which, according to the spec, appears to be fine?): apiPort: :8080 puppet consumes ENC output puppet has some behavior that causes the following to occur sometimes, but not all the time (more data on this when I can get it): puppet says "That value has a leading : on it; I need to parse that some more, get rid of the :" puppet says "That looks like an integer" puppet creates a global variable $port = 8080 The only way to fix this (from our ENC, at least) is to tell pyyaml's safe_dump function to use the default flow style, which (according to pyyaml) does not allow ":" to start any string, and will therefore quote any string that starts with ":" (yes there is a specific exemption for this exact use case - funny). And this does, indeed, fix the output; the string is quoted as it should be, and puppet consumes the output happily, as a string, and no more confusion occurs. HOWEVER, this is explicitly listed as a violation of the YAML specification, and is a blatant hack, so we would prefer not to rely on it. While the behavior of pyyaml here is questionable (and there may indeed be a bug filed with them over this), the behavior of puppet's yaml parser does seem to defy the standard; it seems that it should be consuming ":8080" as a string, even if it is unquoted. This is a rather pesky bug that is doing a very good job of destroying faith in our ENC, and the idea that "what you put in the ENC is what you get in your puppet module". Any plans to fix this in puppet 3? Is there a fix already that I just don't know about? -- You have received this notification because you have either subscribed to it, or are involved in it. To change your notification preferences, please click here: http://projects.puppetlabs.com/my/account -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Bugs" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/puppet-bugs?hl=en.
