I'm considering writing some new-user tips -- something brief,
focusing on writing manifests. Ideally, I will put it on the wiki
when it's in reasonably good shape.
I'm interested in your comments about whether this would overlap too
much with the existing tutorial material, and I welcome any tips you
might want to contribute. I also welcome any commentary about the
tips I've already got:
1. Start small. Begin with a manifest that controls just one thing,
via one of the built-in resource types. Host, File, and Service are
good choices for your first managed resource.
2. All resource declarations and variables should go inside classes.
No exceptions.
3. All classes should go inside modules. No exceptions.
4. Avoid virtual and exported resources (@resource {...} or @@resource
{...}) until you have a good grasp of the rest of the Puppet
language. These frequently confuse people who don't understand the
tao of Puppet.
5. Avoid defined types (introduced via the 'define' keyword) until you
have a good grasp of the rest of the Puppet language. These are
syntactic sugar, with a gotcha or two mixed in. New users can better
avoid the gotchas if they first acquire a good grasp other parts of
the language.
6. Follow the style guide. At worst, write your own style guide and
follow that.
7. With Puppet, you influence the order in which resources are applied
via the "require" and "before" metaparameters. Use them where
necessary (and only where necessary).
8. Use an SCM system such as Subversion or git to track and manage
your manifests.
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