Removing old java paths - Puppet - path

Question

We are having an issue with the puppet java modules. They are adding the correct path, but they do not remove the old path:
C:\Windows\system32>path
PATH=C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program
Files (x86)\IBM\RationalSDLC\common;;C:\Program Files
(x86)\NTP\bin;C:\Program Files (x86)\Puppet Labs\Puppet\bin;C:\Program
Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_50\bin;C:\PROGRA~1\apache-maven\bin;C:\Program
Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_55\bin
You can see that it added the correct path at the end, but the original version jdk1.7_50\bin still exists. How can we make sure that it removes the old version every time it installs a newer version?
Edit: More importantly what we need to do is have it search for the JAVA_HOME path variable, compare that against Path variable, delete any java directory that doesnt belong, and copy the JAVA_HOME to Path. Hope that makes sense.

Answer 1

The puppetlabs-java module does not seem to make an effort to update the default environment.
I believe that the behavior you are observing results from actions taken by the Java installer itself.
If you can find out where Java puts the commands to append to the PATH, you may be able to have Puppet remove the obsolete lines using the file_line type from the stdlib module.
Edit after you supplied the manifest that handles the path:
If your paths are managed through this module, you will need to add resources to your manifest to remove each single obsolete entry, such as:
windows_path {
'java7u50':
ensure => absent,
directory => 'C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_50\bin';
}
To simplify this for many versions, you can create a defined type:
define obsolete_java {
windows_path {
$name:
ensure => absent,
directory => "C:\Program Files\Java\$name\bin";
}
}
and use it like
obsolete_java { [ 'jdk1.7.0_50', 'jdk1.7.0_42', ... ]: }