How people actually write Puppet code

An analysis of more than 7.5 million lines of Puppet code. Looking at what features people use (or don't use) and how we might use this to design Puppet and help the Puppet community. Warning: contains lots of SQL queries .

Transcript

1. Gareth Rushgrove
   How people actually
   write Puppet
   Analyzing 7.5 million lines of Puppet code
   

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3. @garethr
   

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4. What if we were to analyze
   all of the code written in the
   Puppet language?
   

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5. - But why?
   - GitHub and BigQuery
   - Libraries.io and the Forge
   - Caveats and limitations
   

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6. WARNING
   This presentation contains
   far too many SQL queries
   with embedded regex
   

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7. But why?
   Why analyzing code is useful
   

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8. Making design decisions
   

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9. What features could/should
   be removed?
   

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10. Identify common problems
    which can be addressed
    with additional tooling
    

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11. See how and where new
    features are adopted by users
    

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12. Identify contributors for more
    qualitative research
    

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13. GitHub and BigQuery
    Our main source of data
    

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14. Open source code on GitHub available in BigQuery
    

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15. BigQuery provides a SQL
    interface to all of the code
    on GitHub, along with the
    associated metadata
    

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16. puppetlabs/puppet-bigquery
    

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17. Repository contains all the
    queries used in this this talk
    

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18. How many bytes of Puppet code?
    

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19. How many lines of Puppet code?
    

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20. In how many files?
    

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21. From how many contributors?
    

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22. So we have lots of code
    from lots of people. What
    questions might we ask?
    

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23. How do people license their Puppet code?
    

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24. How do people license their Puppet code?
    mit(7345) apache-2.0 (6368)
    gpl-3.0 (1537) gpl-2.0 (1512)
    bsd-3-clause (805) bsd-2-clause (373)
    mpl-2.0 (287) agpl-3.0 (160) isc (121)
    unlicense (105)
    

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25. Mainly permissive licenses,
    but nearly 15% is GPL
    

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26. What do people name their classes?
    apache(153) mysql (131) php (129)
    base (118) main (118) nginx (110) git
    (84) python (82) mysql::params (69)
    ssh (64) mysql::server (59) apt (59)
    puppet::params (56) mysql::config
    (55) nodejs (53) apt_get_update (52)
    

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27. What do people name defined types?
    add_dotdeb (75) mysql_db (68)
    mysql_nginx_default_conf (57)
    mongodb_db(52) nginx_vhost (49)
    postgresql_db (40) mariadb_db (39)
    mariabdb_nginx_default_conf (38)
    safepackage(31) iptables_port (26)
    

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28. What packages do people manage with Puppet?
    git (552) curl (386) wget (239)
    nginx(246) apache2 (244) vim (243)
    unzip (238) build-essential (197)
    python-pip (185) mysql (184)
    ntp (176) openssh-server (156) nodejs
    (152) httpd (138)
    

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29. What services do people manage with Puppet?
    apache2 (314) nginx (280) mysql (239)
    httpd (165) puppet (125) iptables (119)
    ssh (105) postgresql (93) php5-fpm
    (88) neutron-server (81) ntp (76)
    postfix (74) ntpd (71) sshd (70)
    mysqld (69)
    

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30. These give a good indication of
    the most common stacks
    managed with Puppet
    

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31. - Apache and Nginx
    - PHP, Python and Node.js
    - MySQL and PostgreSQL
    

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32. It would be interesting to look at
    this over time too
    

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33. Who committed most of this code?
    

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34. Popular file names containing Puppet code
    

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35. Simple Puppet Module Structure in 2009
    

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36. Evidence that install, config,
    service pattern became the
    defacto way of organising code
    

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37. What types are used the most?
    

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38. Which resource types are most used?
    file (30298) package (22162)
    exec (16825) service (11112)
    user (3951) host (2361) group (2181)
    notify (2151) yumrepo (1229) cron
    (1122) stage (429) resources (380)
    mount (373) ssh_authorized_key (271)
    

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39. Which resource types are least used?
    interface (260) zone (207)
    selboolean (108) router (103) tidy
    (76) sshkey (66) schedule (42)
    filebucket (42) mailalias (40) vlan
    (31) selmodule (25) zfs (11) mcx (6)
    scheduled_task (5) zpool (3)
    k5login (3) computer (2) maillist (1)
    

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40. More than 50% of resources are
    file and package
    

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41. exec accounts for ~18% of
    resources
    

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42. A very long tail. maillist was
    used once in 7.5 million lines
    

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43. How popular are the nagios types?
    service (160) command (56)
    host (49) servicedependency (35)
    contact (18) servicegroup (10)
    hostextinfo (8) timeperiod (5)
    hostdependency (3) serviceescalation
    (2) hostescalation (1)
    

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44. Which new features are used?
    

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45. Which data type are being used?
    String (603) Boolean (411)
    Integer (174) Hash (132) Array (82)
    Default (14) Float (5) Numeric (3)
    Undef (1)
    

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46. Which abstract data types are in use?
    Optional(611) Enum (277)
    Data (162) Type (145) Variant (134)
    All (127) Patter (73) Tuple (13)
    Collection (11) Struct (11) Scaler (2)
    

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47. How many repositories container Gemfiles?
    

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48. What gems are popular in Puppet projects?
    

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49. What gems are popular in Puppet projects?
    puppet (1285) puppetlabs_spec_helper
    (1268) rake (1215) puppet-lint (837)
    metadata-json-lint (726) beaker-rspec
    (694) rspec-puppet (676)
    puppet-blacksmith (518) beaker (509)
    serverspec (444)
    

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50. Which puppet-lint plugins are most used?
    unquoted_string (366) leading_zero (344)
    absolute_classname (318) trailing_comma (310)
    version_comparison (248)
    variable_contains_uppercase (222)
    beginning_with_digits (191) emtyp_string (156)
    undef_in_function (147)
    spaceship_operatorwithout_tag (135)
    

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51. Other sources of data
    Libraries.io, the Forge API and more
    

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52. Different systems often
    have different views on
    the same object
    

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53. Libraries.io
    

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54. Puppet Forge API
    

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55. forgeapi.puppetlabs.com/v3/modules
    {
    "uri": "/v3/modules/arioch-keepalived",
    "slug": "arioch-keepalived",
    "name": "keepalived",
    "downloads": 5551609,
    "created_at": "2013-07-02 09:13:33 -0700",
    "updated_at": "2016-12-28 20:00:02 -0800",
    "deprecated_at": null,
    "deprecated_for": null,
    "superseded_by": null,
    "supported": false,
    "endorsement": "approved",
    "module_group": "base",
    "owner": {
    "uri": "/v3/users/arioch",
    "slug": "arioch",
    "username": "arioch",
    

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56. Puppet version dependencies
    

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57. Long tail of specific Puppet
    version requirements
    

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58. What licenses are popular for Forge modules?
    

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59. Interesting to note that while
    most Puppet repositories are
    MIT, most published modules
    are Apache licensed
    

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60. Caveats
    Limitations of the data
    

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61. Obviously this is a subset of
    all Puppet code
    

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62. Software has bugs.
    Including this software.
    

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63. How does private Puppet code
    vary from this dataset?
    

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64. Conclusions
    If all you remember is...
    

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65. The ability to ask questions
    of a large data set is a
    useful design tool
    

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66. For example, we could use
    this approach to see how
    people adopt the new
    Puppet Tasks
    

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67. - Analyzing hieradata
    - Parsing all of the Puppet code
    - Seeing changes over time
    So many more questions:
    

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68. - Make it easy to run against your own code
    - Some way of submitting aggregates
    - Publish public bigquery tables
    Lots of ideas too:
    

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69. Any questions?
    And thanks for listening
    

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