just a quick "me too"...
could this be added to 1.2? If not, a possible workaround would also be to establish a custom fact "environment" on Puppet 3.x clients.

OK, here is my custom fact, which I just verified to work:

require 'puppet'

if Facter.value(:puppetversion).to_i >= 3
  Facter.add(:environment) do
    setcode do
      Puppet[:environment]
    end
  end
end

Are there any plans to implement updating host environment based on reports (and setting to control this)? I think this would be very useful, especially in situations where people use Foreman only for reporting/stats. I was thinking of implementing this, if work hasn't already been starter.

Nobody's started, I think that'd be appreciated, thanks.

Michael, I'm using Puppet 3.7.3 on CentOS 7.0 and just tried your facter snippet and it did not work. My client is currently in an environment named yum_test (set in [agent] section of /etc/puppet/puppet.conf). My results are:

[root@puppetdb21a ~]# puppet agent -t
Info: Retrieving pluginfacts
Info: Retrieving plugin
Notice: /File[/var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/environment.rb]/ensure: defined content as '{md5}ac9d6b73454314a1da95e227eb9fdbbc'
Info: Loading facts
Info: Caching catalog for puppetdb21a.sans.org
Info: Applying configuration version '1417450699'
Notice: Finished catalog run in 2.76 seconds
[root@puppetdb21a ~]# puppet agent --configprint environment
yum_test
[root@puppetdb21a ~]# facter -p environment
production

If I replace the "Puppet[:environment]" line with "Facter::Util::Resolution.exec('puppet agent --configprint environment ')" then it works.

But given that "puppet agent --configprint environment" is returning the actual value, where might "Facter[:environment]" be getting "production" from?

David, I didn't use that fact for a long time now, but still would expect it to work, when used with "puppet agent --test". Could you check that? It probably never worked for the facter -p case.

Ok, I tried again and it does work, mainly.

I am using the theforeman/puppet and the theforeman/foreman modules to setup my servers. The puppet module dynamically rebuilds the puppet.conf file each run if there are any changes, including something like the command line argument "--environment yum_test". I'm also changing the setting update_environment_from_facts to true in Foreman with the goal of seeing what environment the servers are really in as I am not using Foreman as the ENC and classifying from within.

With your code snippet restored, it did actually update the host status within Foreman and more importantly, when I run "puppet agent -t" on a box in a different environment, it is picking up the new environment's hieradata directory which is the desired behavior. "factor -p environment" still shows "production" on the server even if it is in a different environment, even after multiple puppet agent runs.

When I had tried with my exec statement, it was updating the environment info displayed by "factor -p" but it was also overriding the command-line "--environment" argument which meant I could not dynamically switch environments. I had to edit /etc/puppet/puppet.conf and change the environment there manually, then run puppet and it picked up the "new" environment setting and used the appropriate hieradata.

Given that other facts that I have written show up in the output of "factor -p", why would this one not? (using your snippet)

That's a Puppet question, as Foreman is out of the whole picture there, but anyway, here we go.. :)

That "require 'puppet'" (which might be too much anyway) in the custom fact's code is loading the necessary code portion from Puppet into facter, but it doesn't do any Puppet agent related initialization, so if you just run "facter -p" it will run with all the defaults from the Puppet code, which is e.g. production for the environment, as the -p switch to my knowledge just extends facter's library path to also include e.g. /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/ so you can use the facts coming from pluginsync via Puppet.

When running under the Puppet agent, however, facter is spawned under the whole Puppet agent, so all the initialization was already done.

As this is a Puppet change, Foreman can nothing do about, I'm leaning towards closing this issue. Opinions?