Puppet

This is an RFC feature request. I think I’d like the file type to autorequire not only its parent directory, but any parent directories which appear in the catalog.

My concrete use case involves packages which install directory hierarchies. For example, the cobbler RPM installs /var/lib/cobbler, /var/lib/cobbler/kickstarts, /var/lib/cobbler/snippets, /var/lib/cobbler/triggers, &c. I install the Cobbler package in one module, and install Cobbler kickstarts and snippets in several other places. Rather than adding require => Package['cobbler'] to these numerous and disparate file resources, I’d rather put this in my cobbler module:

package { 'cobbler': ensure => present }

file { '/var/lib/cobbler':
  ensure  => directory,
  require => Package['cobbler'],
}

And have that be a way of saying, “The /var/lib/cobbler hierarchy is created by the cobbler RPM; please treat the package as a (transitive) requirement for any files installed under this hierarchy.” (I’d prefer to specify this information once, and to specify it in the cobbler module itself.)

The only downsides I can think of are (1) some superfluous relationships in catalogs that define dense hierarchical file resources, and (2) the outside possibility of creating cycles in existing (probably bizarre) catalogs.

If this behavior seems desirable, I’ve got a tiny patch which implements it, and I should be able to add some tests fairly easily.

(Incidentally, this feature would resolve issue #3648 pretty cleanly.)