In this chapter, we have given a peek to what is the future of Puppet. We have explored the new Parser and most of its language enhancements, such as the Lambdas and the iteration functions.

We have seen how the new type system allows a much more structured approach to data validation and management and how this can enrich our possibilities to use and manipulate data.

We have mentioned some other features, such as support for heredoc, the contain function, the EPP templates, data in modules, and directory environments.

We have also reviewed Facter 2, with support for structured facts and aggregations, and finally took a quick look at TrapperKeeper, which will be the basis of the future Puppet Labs applications written in Clojure.

The number of changes introduced in Puppet 4 is quite relevant, and they will definitely make complex operations on data easier.

Maybe we will partly lose the unique feeling of the Puppet declarative DSL, where a system administrator can easily understand what...