Puppet Community

yeah, I’d do the same as <@U6B5Q9BSA> suggested.. but we have to deal with legacy here..

actually when the EPP has Variant[String, Array[String]] $raw_append = [] I think that the epp() method can use undef

This clearly breaks backwards compatibility, but makes the templates much more straightforward to process (in my brain, I think my computer does not see a difference)

it'll use the default value from the EPP in that case, which is an empty array

hm.. btw, yes.. can try to use Undef + [] as default in EPP.. let me try

but again if $raw_append is String it’ll pass the string into $raw_append.each

so either it should be preconverted to an array or we may need the magic in the template

another solution is epp('file.pp', { 'raw_append' =&gt; pick($raw_append, []) })

but I'd even argue that `Optional[Variant[Array, String]] $raw_append = undef` to `Variant[String, Array[String]] $raw_append = []` is non-breaking because you can't really pass in undef (technically you can via Hiera, but that's a bit of an edge case IMHO)

agree.. let’s switch from undef to [] and drop Optional

<@UNNE9882X> thats what our style guide recommends anyways

it fixes the issue, thank you for all the suggestions!

I guess I can do the same for `Optional[Hash] $mailhost_cfg_prepend           = undef,` which is Variant of 2 Hash-es actually

omg.. according to tests it’s not that easy.. there are some String variants too..

can I do Hash[Variant[…]] or it should be Variant[Hash[…], Hash[…]]?

ah, well.. I can do Hash[Variant[], Variant[]] I guess..

If you can, `Hash[String[1], Variant[...]]` is probably the easiest first move

Then `Struct[]` can allow awesome things, but it can only be a long-term plan given the current state of the module.

```  Hash[String, Variant[
      Hash[String, Array[String]],
      Array[String],
      String,
  ]] $mailhost_cfg_append                        = {},```

this is the current definition matching the unit tests :confused:

I bet Hiera did this :slightly_smiling_face:

did you know that the Hash above is sorted by keys in the templates? :slightly_smiling_face:

At this point you can just use `Data` :slightly_smiling_face:

weirdest thing out there is that someone made some smart tricks and all their configs are based on playing with that badly :disappointed:

I’m 99% sure there is at least one such setup

one thing to consider is that you can use Puppet functions to transform data as well - perhaps some private helpers to normalize it would be beneficial?

no idea if it helps here, but throwing it out there as an option

ty, I’ll think about.. I just realised I missed few more variants in the definition above.. nested Hash can have String, String variant too