Dear Sean,
David has already given you great answers to the questions you posed. I
have nothing to add to those, but I feel inclined to nitpick your question
a bit:
On Tuesday, September 26, 2017 at 10:00:49 AM UTC-5, Sean wrote:
[...]
> The class arrays are strings of fully qualified subclass names, e.g. [
> 'complex::redhat::subclass1', 'complex::redhat::subclass2', ] etc.
>
> Is there a benefit to actually using class params or declaring all
> references to class variables directly as fully qualified in the subclasses?
>
> Here's a simplified example subclass, and yes the example is silly, if we
> enable/disable a feature in puppet code, why not just exclude the subclass
> altogether. Typically, that is what happens, but I was failing to find any
> other simplistic examples to provide.
>
> class complex::redhat::subclass1 (
> Boolean $enable_feature1,
> ) {
>
> if $enable_feature1 {
> notify("${::osfamily} Feature 1 is enabled")
> } else {
> notify("${::osfamily} Feature 1 is disabled")
> }
>
> }
>
>
>
Puppet has subclasses, whose definitions can be recognized by their use of
the 'inherits' keyword. What you are describing are not them. Even *bona
fide* Puppet subclasses behave differently than most people tend to expect
based on the uses of the term "subclass" in object-oriented programming
languages, but the classes you are actually describing have nothing at all
recognizable as a superclass / subclass relationship, in any accepted sense
of the term. In particular, each of the classes you described defines its
own namespace, separate from and independent of all the others'.
The thrust of some of your questions suggests uncertainty about the
relationship between those classes, which is an excellent reason to avoid
use of the term 'subclass' for it. Even if you understood (and when you do
understand) the relationship, describing it via the term 'subclass' is
prone to confuse. In fact, one class having another's name as its
namespace has very little practical significance, other than putting them
in the same module. Even that is primarily organizational, not functional.
I suggest just calling them "classes".
John
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