From: "Alex S." <lists@...>
Date: 2012-07-16T16:04:25+09:00
Subject: Newbie questions on the meanings of things in Ruby

Hi,

I am tasked with the development of puppet provider. I am a few days
into Ruby and looking at the existing providers I am finding it hard to
interpret - I went over Ruby pargprog book and I am still not sure what
the following syntax means. I was hoping someone might be kind enough to
guide me through the terms here. This is the code  fragment I am
struggling to understand:

Puppet::Type.type(:file).provide :posix do
  desc "Uses POSIX functionality to manage file ownership and
permissions."

  confine :feature => :posix

  include Puppet::Util::POSIX
  include Puppet::Util::Warnings

  require 'etc'

  def uid2name(id)
    return id.to_s if id.is_a?(Symbol) or id.is_a?(String)
    return nil if id > Puppet[:maximum_uid].to_i

    begin
      user = Etc.getpwuid(id)
    rescue TypeError, ArgumentError
      return nil
    end

    if user.uid == ""
      return nil
    else
      return user.name
    end
  end

....

end

In particular I am finding it hard to understand what the first line
means -

Puppet::Type.type(:file).provide :posix do

?

Is this some sort of dynamic class (Type) extension? If so is there a
resource I can go to dig up a bit more on this?

Thanks,
Alex.

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