seting multiple alternatives to the same path about puppet-alternatives HOT 6 CLOSED

Looks like a rather severe design error.

Yes, the alternative's name cannot map to name and be namevar, because by its nature, you need more than one alternative that share the same name. However, it's plain that there can also be several independent alternatives with different names (alternatives for different things) that point to the same binary. So the path (in alternative terms) is not unique at all.

What is probably unique is the name+path combination, forming a distinct alternative for name. Going for a composite namevar, however, would likely be absolute overkill.

Proposal: Make the name parameter meaningless. Add a path property that takes the role of the current name parameter. The wrinkle being that it will allow managing the same resource twice or more, like:

alternative_entry { 'nvim as vim':
  path     => '/usr/bin/nvim',
  altlink  => '/usr/bin/vim',
  altname  => 'vim',
}
alternative_entry { 'trololol':
  path     => '/usr/bin/nvim',
  altlink  => '/usr/bin/vim',
  altname  => 'vim',
  priority => 9000,
}

Still, I rather feel that this inconvenience is not worth the hassle of dealing with composite namevars. Unless, of course, @crayfishx wishes to step up and do the fun part ;-)

(Note, I especially love how the provider has a name= method despite name not being a property.)

from puppet-alternatives.

@ffrank I don't think composite namevars are overkill at all, in fact, I think it's very appropriate for this type. I'll try and contribute the 'fun part' ;-)...

from puppet-alternatives.

I would much rather see composite namevars than the leave it open to duplicate resource declarations like in your example.

from puppet-alternatives.

Cool. And yes, that will probably be the only way to build a really clean abstraction.

from puppet-alternatives.

can't we just fix this by using title and name distinctly?
or… use better… names?

from puppet-alternatives.

Well, you can always make name to be meaningless, so that resource titles become arbitrary.

However (and this is a big one), this allows users to manage any entity with multiple resources (that have different, meaningless names/titles). So that would be quite horrible as well. Let's not do that.

from puppet-alternatives.