Strengthening Open Source Facter: Ensuring Compatibility and Essential Maintenance

Over the course of 2025, the Puppet Core team has been committed to developing secure, hardened Puppet code that our customers can rely on. As part of that shift, many Puppet platform components, including Facter, were brought under the Puppet Core model and were moved into private repositories.  

While this helps us deliver reliable, secure hardened binaries for our Puppet Core customers, it also means that Open Source Facter received fewer essential updates that it needed to stay compatible with other Puppet components. 

Here at Perforce Puppet, we are committed to our open source community, which is why when we received feedback around compatibility concerns of Open Source Facter, we listened: Facter needs active care to ensure interoperability between Open Source and Puppet Core versions. 

What's Changed 

We have committed to maintaining the interoperability of Open Source Facter with Puppet Core Facter by: 

• Backporting essential maintenance updates (e.g. critical bug fixes, dependency updates, etc) from Puppet Core Facter into Open Source Facter.
• Ensuring ongoing compatibility with Puppet Core Facter by mirroring any Fact additions, updates or removals in Open Source Facter. 

This effort has not added new features or security fixes from Puppet Core Facter into open-source Facter but has ensured that the Open Source project remains compatible and usable in your Puppet workflows. 

You can review the updates we’ve brought over in the Open Source Facter GitHub repository. 

Why We're Doing This

Facter is at the heart of Puppet. It provides the system facts which drive how configurations are applied. Even small compatibility gaps between Open Source and Puppet Core Facter can have a large impact downstream. By committing to Open Source Facter’s compatibility, we’re making sure the entire Puppet community can rely on a maintained, stable version of Facter. 

Where You Can Fit In 

Community input and feedback is essential to ensuring that the Puppet code we all use and depend on is robust and reliable. We want to keep that collaboration going. You can help by: 

• Filing issues: If you find any bugs, please file an issue in the Facter Github repo.
• Contributing fixes: Pull requests are welcome! You can suggest features, essential updates and bug fixes in the Facter Github repo.
• Staying engaged: Join the conversation in the Puppet Community Slack. 

We want to thank everyone who raised concerns and helped us shape this path forward. Your feedback ensures Puppet stays stronger together.