Software delivery with Puppet

Puppet is an open-source, client-server based UNIX system management solution. It uses differential compares to a listing of configurations and applies those changes to client machines if necessary, based on machine's facts. Companies including Google, Inc. are currently using Puppet to manage their large scaled Mac OS X based computer environment. The book shows and evaluates a test environment to provide software delivery and explains and reviews state-of-the-art technologies how to prepare software for delivery natively under Mac OS X. In addition a proof of concept solution a custom application that changes a machine s fact to request specific software is evaluated. This application triggers the target host to update an extended fact and initiates a new Puppet verification by selecting the requested software on a webpage. This solution achieves self service software delivery and builds on top of Puppets capabilities to use Mac OS X s native .pkg software packages for software distribution.