Monkey patch a puppet provider

I just wanted to monkey patch the puppet package provider for gentoo portage.

But why?

# puppet resource package

Only shows packages installed by puppet, but not packages installed by hand. The apt/dpkg- and yum/rpm-provider list all packages.

It was not enough to place a lib/puppet/provider/package/portage.rb. In all my tests, the original behavior was kept. I only want to replace one function.

But how?

When registering new type or providers, etc, puppet is doing a bunch of magick in the background. So first, I have to figure out the name of the automagically created class.

https://github.com/puppetlabs/puppet/blob/master/lib/puppet/provider/package/portage.rb#L4

Puppet::Type.type(:package).provide :portage, :parent=> Puppet::Provider::Packagedo
  ...
end

Trying this in irb

irb(main):001:0> require 'puppet'

irb(main):002:0> Puppet::Type.type(:package).provide :SOMETEST
=> Puppet::Type::Package::ProviderSometest

Hmm. Is it that simple? In one of our modules, I generated a file lib/puppet/provider/package/portage_zz.rb

require 'puppet'


class Puppet::Type::Package::ProviderPortage
    private
    def self.eix_search_format
      "'<category> <name> [<installedversions:LASTVERSION>] [<bestversion:LASTVERSION>] <homepage> <description>\n'"
    end
end

I called it portage_zz.rb, to be sure it will be loaded after the regular portage.rb.

However, the puppet run with pluginsync shipped this file. And... puppet resource package list all packages :)

https://github.com/puppetlabs/puppet/pull/3765