Salt 0.9.4 Release Notes

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# Salt 0.9.4 Release Notes

Salt 0.9.4 has arrived. This is a critical update that repairs a number of key bugs found in 0.9.3. But this update is not without feature additions as well! 0.9.4 adds support for Gentoo portage to the pkg module and state system. Also there are 2 major new state additions, the failhard option and the ability to set up finite state ordering with the `order` option.

This release also sees our largest increase in community contributions. These contributors have and continue to be the life blood of the Salt project, and the team continues to grow. I want to put out a big thanks to our new and existing contributors.

## Download!

The Salt source can be downloaded from the salt github site:

https://github.com/downloads/saltstack/salt/salt-0.9.4.tar.gz

Or from PiPy:

http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/s/salt/salt-0.9.4.tar.gz

For instructions on how to set up Salt please see the Installation instructions.

## New Features

### Failhard State Option

Normally, when a state fails Salt continues to execute the remainder of the defined states and will only refuse to execute states that require the failed state.

But the situation may exist, where you would want all state execution to stop if a single state execution fails. The capability to do this is called `failing hard`.

#### State Level Failhard

A single state can have a failhard set, this means that if this individual state fails that all state execution will immediately stop. This is a great thing to do if there is a state that sets up a critical config file and setting a require for each state that reads the config would be cumbersome. A good example of this would be setting up a package manager early on:

    /etc/yum.repos.d/company.repo:
      file:
        - managed
        - source: salt://company/yumrepo.conf
        - user: root
        - group: root
        - mode: 644
        - order: 1
        - failhard: True

In this situation, the yum repo is going to be configured before other states, and if it fails to lay down the config file, than no other states will be executed.

#### Global Failhard

It may be desired to have failhard be applied to every state that is executed, if this is the case, then failhard can be set in the master configuration file. Setting failhard in the master configuration file will result in failing hard when any minion gathering states from the master have a state fail.

This is NOT the default behavior, normally Salt will only fail states that require a failed state.

Using the global failhard is generally not recommended, since it can result in states not being executed or even checked. It can also be confusing to see states failhard if an admin is not actively aware that the failhard has been set.

To use the global failhard set failhard: True in the master configuration

### Finite Ordering of State Execution

When creating salt sls files, it is often important to ensure that they run in a specific order. While states will always execute in the same order, that order is not necessarily defined the way you want it.

A few tools exist in Salt to set up the correct state ordering, these tools consist of requisite declarations and order options.

#### The Order Option

Before using the order option, remember that the majority of state ordering should be done with requisite statements, and that a requisite statement will override an order option.

The order option is used by adding an order number to a state declaration with the option order:

    vim:
      pkg:
        - installed
        - order: 1

By adding the order option to 1 this ensures that the vim package will be installed in tandem with any other state declaration set to the order 1.

Any state declared without an order option will be executed after all states with order options are executed.

But this construct can only handle ordering states from the beginning. Sometimes you may want to send a state to the end of the line, to do this set the order to last:

    vim:
      pkg:
        - installed
        - order: last

Substantial testing has gone into the state system and it is ready for real world usage. A great deal has been added to the documentation for states and the modules and functions available to states have been cleanly documented.

A number of State System bugs have also been founds and repaired, the output from the state system has also been refined to be extremely clear and concise.

Error reporting has also been introduced, issues found in sls files will now be clearly reported when executing Salt States.

### Gentoo Support

Additional experimental support has been added for Gentoo. This is found in the contribution from Doug Renn, aka nestegg.

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