Order of pillar namespace flattening?

[thanatos]

According to the Salt documentation:

The separate pillar files all share the same namespace. Given a top.sls of:

base:
  '*':
    - packages
    - services

a packages.sls file of:

bind: bind9

and a services.sls file of:

bind: named

Then a request for the bind pillar will only return 'named'; the 'bind9' value is not available.

I've attempted to implement this. My top.sls file:

roy1:
  'G@cluster:roy1':
    - match: compound
    - packages
    - services

My packages.sls file:

bind: bind9

My services.sls file:

bind: named

Which I think should match the docs. However, I get:

$ salt foo.example.com saltutil.refresh_pillar
foo.example.com:
    None
$ salt foo.example.com pillar.get bind
foo.example.com:
    bind9

…which is opposite what the docs say I should get.

We're trying to use this functionality to override a pillar value: we define a default for the value in a common.sls in a base tree, (which comes first in the environment) and then in a later tree, try to override it in a custom.sls file. The custom.sls file is listed second, but common.sls appears to win out.

1. Can the docs reflect what order things get applied in, and be correct?
2. What's a good way to have a default value specified in an SLS, but be overridable?

(Our salt version is: salt 0.17.1)

[basepi]

Pillar was changed to use OrderedDict objects to retain the top.sls order in a later version than 0.17.1 (I'm not sure exactly which version off the top of my head, but I just tested your example and it works as stated in the docs for the 2014.1 versions of salt (as well as develop) and I also tested on version 0.17.1, where I got the same results as you.

If you'd like the documented behavior, please upgrade to a newer version of salt.