[Labs-l] Getting rid of the test branch - get ready for a slight workflow change!

Wed Jun 20 17:04:27 UTC 2012

> Reconciling the diff between 'test' and 'production' sounds fantastic.
>  But... won't there still be cases where a test branch is needed?  For
> example, I sometimes like to run tests on a fresh instance in order to make
> sure that I can build the configuration in a single, clean run.  If I can
> only test my changes on a system that has puppetmaster::self installed, then
> that machine is no longer 'fresh'.
>
> Clearly having a per-project puppetmaster (with a project-specific branch)
> is a better solution than having a global test branch... but in the meantime
> I'm not sure I'm ready to give up having a place where I can push patches
> and know that I won't accidentally take the encyclopedia offline.
>

If puppet runs on the local instance without issues, then it should in
production as well. In production we don't build a server from
scratch. We install it, run puppet, add the classes, then run puppet,
etc. Current servers shouldn't be affected. Also, we'll do code review
before its merged.

What you mention is a problem, though. The long-term goal is to switch
the repo to use modules, then we can have an environment per branch on
the puppet master. This will take a long, long time, though.

- Ryan