Building packages automatically from source

Packages aren't always available, or convenient to create, for the software you need to manage with Puppet. A source install (downloading the program source files and compiling them on the target machine) is sometimes the only way to get what you need.

If you have to build a program from source, Puppet can help with this process. The general procedure is to automate the following steps:

1. Download the source tarball

2. Unpack the tarball

3. Configure and build the program

4. Install the program

How to do it…

In this example we'll build the popular load testing tool Httperf (there's no need to do this for production, as there's a distro package available in Ubuntu, but it's a pretty straightforward example of a source install):

1. Modify your manifests/nodes.pp file as follows:

   node 'cookbook' {
     exec { 'install-httperf':
       cwd     => '/root',
       command => '/usr/bin/wget https://httperf.googlecode.com/files/httperf-0.9.0.tar.gz && /bin/tar xvzf httperf...