Puppet has implicit ordering (for example, a file will depend on its parent directory) as well as explicit (arrow syntax, new in 3.0, I think).

But really, I don't understand the complaint. Writing explicit dependencies literally what Puppet -- or any other config management system -- is about. Puppet cannot possibly know what your intent is. So you have to tell it. Just like you have to tell the OP's system. It's simple enough.

Having used Puppet for a few years, my biggest complaint is that it's not quite modular enough. For example, in one system I have a way of declaring an "app". An app may have some dependencies (Postgres, Memcached), settings, users, etc. I have two choices, I think; either have one large, monolithic define allowing me to instantiate the app from a bunch of config:

    apps::app {
      "someapp":
        environment => 'production',
        uses_unicorn => true,
        db_name => 'someapp_production',
        db_user => 'someapp',
        memcached_servers => [...],
        # etc.

...which means that every setting has to be a variable that's passed around and used by the define. Or I can split it up into pieces:

    apps::app {
      "someapp":
        environment => 'production';
    }
    apps::memcached_config {
      "someapp":
        servers => [...];
    }
    apps::db_config {
      "someapp":
        host => ...,
        db_name => ...,
        db_user => ...;
    }
    apps::unicorn_config {
      "someapp":
        ;
    }

The problem with the latter approach is that eventually, much the configuration needs to be collected into just a few actual config files. Let's imagine that the app uses a single "app.conf". Normally you would build it using a template. But with the second approach, you would have to build it out of fragments that come from multiple defines; probably you would collect them in a conf.d type folder, and then use an "exec" definition to concatenate them into "app.conf".

Puppet is very modular, but it's a bit awkward when it comes to this level of modularity -- or I haven't found a better way.