#924409 hiera should be removed after Buster is released

Package:
hiera
Source:
hiera
Submitter:
Antoine Beaupre
Date:
2025-08-17 17:48:27 UTC
Severity:
important
Tags:
#924409#5
Date:
2019-03-12 17:07:15 UTC
From:
To:
I see that Hiera in Puppet is at version 3.2.0 in buster. That's at
least two minor versions behind upstream, which is (unofficially) at
3.5:

https://github.com/puppetlabs/hiera/releases

That said, Hiera itself is deprecated as a standalone system: Hiera 5
has been part of Puppet since 4.9:

https://puppet.com/docs/hiera/3.3/index.html

The Hiera README on GitHub says the same:

https://github.com/puppetlabs/hiera/blob/master/README.md

"This project is deprecated in favor of Hiera version 5 which is
implementation in Puppet."

Since Buster will likely ship with Puppet 5.5 (or later), it doesn't
seem to make sense to ship Hiera in buster and it should be
removed. It could also be removed from unstable as well, but I wanted
to checkin with maintainers here first before filing a formal removal.

Thanks for your work!

#924409#12
Date:
2019-03-14 06:21:10 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

Puppet currently lists `hiera` (3) as a runtime dependency in its
gemspec[1]. This is to provide backward compatibility until users
manually upgrade[2] their Puppet manifests, as Hiera 3 and Hiera 5 are
incompatible.

Since Hiera 5 was introduced after Stretch was released, we should keep
plain `hiera` around for Buster to allow users to upgrade in a
non-disruptive fashion. Of course we should document all of this on the
release notes :)

I'm lowering severity to non-RC, but keeping the bug around with an
updated title so that we can remove hiera after Buster's release.

Thanks,
Apollon

[1] https://github.com/puppetlabs/puppet/blob/master/.gemspec#L35
[2] https://puppet.com/docs/puppet/5.3/hiera_migrate.html

#924409#23
Date:
2019-03-14 12:31:22 UTC
From:
To:
Awesome, thanks for the update and your work!

A.