Puppet

If you have a file resource that recursively creates a directory hierarchy, and another file resource that stores a file somewhere in that directory hierarchy, then the two resources may be evaluated in the wrong order. The autorequire handling, which usually causes a file to require its parent directory, doesn’t work in this case.

class myclass {
    file { "/topdir/subdir/filename":
        ensure => file,
        content => "testing",
        # autorequires File["/topdir/subdir"], but doesn't notice
        # that /topdir/subdir is actually created by recursion in
        # the File["/topdir"] resource.
    }
    file { "/topdir":
        ensure => directory,
        recurse => inf,
        source => "puppet:///myclass/topdir",
        # assuming /myclass/files/topdir exists
        # on the puppetmaster, and assuming it contains
        # the "subdir" subdirectory, this resource
        # will create "/topdir/subdir" on the client,
        # but this sometimes happens too late for files
        # that should live in that subdirectory.
    }
}