Using environments to get you a proper release cycle with a version control system that lets you integrate from development -> unstable -> testing -> stable gets us a fair chunk of the way with Puppet, but a large missing part is continuous builds that don’t require user interaction in the unstable/testing phases, along with a way of marking changelists so you can assert appropriate test conditions.

We’ve actually started building unit tests for our Mac images for client deployment that you can run without actually installing the image on a client, and this is a baby first step towards proper automated testing infrastructure for client deployment.

For the enterprise IBM and HP would love to be able to do this. For IBM they take a CMDB type approach and try to do what if’s. You guys are coming at it from a much better perspective. Figure this one out boys and you will be the Chiefs of a new tribe.

johnmwillis.com

There isn’t a good way to test puppet other than pushing things live. There’s no way to do continuous integration. Failures are often frustratingly opaque.

That said, I love me some puppet.