Provider development

Providers are back-ends that support specific implementations of a given resource type, particularly for different platforms. Not all resource types have or need providers, but any resource type concerned about portability will likely need them.

For instance, there are more than 20 package providers, including providers for package formats like dpkg and rpm along with high-level package managers like apt and yum. A provider’s main job is to wrap client-side tools, usually by just calling out to those tools with the right information.

The examples on this page use the apt and dpkg package providers, and the examples used are current as of 0.23.0.

Unless you are maintaining existing type and provider code, or the Resource API limitations affect you, use the Resource API to create custom resource types, instead of this method.