Description

Here is the puppet snippet I use:

class standalone-puppet {
        $logdest = "/var/log/puppet/cron.log"
        cron { hourly-puppet:
                command => "/usr/bin/puppet \
                        --use-nodes /etc/puppet/manifests/site.pp \
                        --logdest $logdest",
                user => root,
                minute => 48,
        }
}

Every time puppet runs and updates the cronjob, on debian, it updates the cron entry:

notice: //default/standalone-puppet/Cron[hourly-puppet]/command: command changed '/usr/bin/puppet --use-nodes /etc/puppet/manifests/site.pp --logdest /var/log/puppet/cron.log' to '/usr/bin/puppet                         --use-nodes /etc/puppet/manifests/site.pp                         --logdest /var/log/puppet/cron.log'

I'm not sure the problem is on puppet or crontab's side, but it would be nice to prevent this. Also, maybe there is a better technique for writing long strings - here documents?