Please add a 'warn' when someone is using 'nginx::resource::vhost' without previously including the nginx class

[law]

Affected Puppet, Ruby, OS and module versions/distributions

• Puppet: 4.x
• Ruby: 2.3.x
• Distribution: Ubuntu
• Module version: 0.5.0

How to reproduce (e.g Puppet code you use)

Given Hiera data like:

role::web::myhost_nginx_vhosts:
  'somehost.mycorp.lan':
    www_root: '/var/www'
    listen_options: 'default_server'
    server_name: ["%{networking.fqdn}"]
    access_log: '/var/log/nginx/myhost-access.log'
    error_log: '/var/log/nginx/myhost-error.log'

and instantiating it in a far-flung role with

class role::web ($myhost_nginx_vhosts) {
  create_resources('nginx::resource::vhost', $myhost_nginx_vhosts)
} 

there will be failures along the lines of:
Evaluation Error: Error while evaluating a Function Call, nil is not an Array. It looks to be a NilClass at /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/vagrant/modules/nginx/manifests/resource/vhost.pp:407:3 at /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/vagrant/modules/role/manifests/web.pp:1 on node blasrgh
This provides few hints as to the root cause of the error, which in this case is our hapless hero forgot to put:
class { 'nginx': }

in the role, kicking off three days of hair-pulling debugging, swearing, and kicking things. Total PEBKAC, yes, but having
unless defined('class nginx { warn('You might want to consider including the nginx class if you are getting strange evaluation errors') }

would've been MOST helpful.

What are you seeing

Red. Mainly from my own foibles.

What behaviour did you expect instead

I expected the module to compile without complaint, but I would've settled for a warning informing me the 'nginx' parent class was not included when I tried to use the vhost defined-type.

Output log

Any additional information you'd like to impart

[vinzent]

I think it should not only warn it should fail. the defined type wants to read defaults from the ::ngninx class - which it only can if it is already parsed. the only way to ensure this is to explicitly include it before defining a resource.