A small example on how you can make apt-get update only run if a) the machine rebooted and b) something changed in /etc/apt. We use cron-apt to run an update every night, to keep the machine up-to-date, so this is really all we need. If you need to add a repository before you can install a package (say, you want to install a package from the Kumina Debian Repository), you can now do it in one puppet run, if you make sure your package resource depends on apt-get update. This is the code:
# Run apt-get update when anything beneath /etc/apt/ changes
exec { "apt-get update":
command => "/usr/bin/apt-get update",
onlyif => "/bin/sh -c '[ ! -f /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin ] || /usr/bin/find /etc/apt/* -cnewer /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin | /bin/grep . > /dev/null'",
}
Update aug 2 2011: Thanks to Enrique’s comment (see in the comments), we’ve made the script slightly prettier. Thanks Enrique!