it is not anymore necessary to have an empty directory as source to purge things

manifests/defines/concatenated_file.pp

@@ -55,9 +55,7 @@ define concatenated_file (
                   'present' => directory,
                   default => $ensure
                 },
-                source => "puppet:///modules/common/empty",
                 checksum => mtime,
-                ignore => '.ignore',
                 recurse => true, purge => true, force => true,
                 mode => $mode, owner => $owner, group => $group,
                 notify => Exec["concat_${name}"];

manifests/defines/module_dir.pp

@@ -31,10 +31,8 @@ define module_dir (
     } else {
         file {
             $dir:
-                source => [ "puppet:///modules/${name}/modules_dir", "puppet:///modules/common/empty"],
                 checksum => mtime,
                 # ignore the placeholder
-                ignore => '.ignore',
                 recurse => true, purge => true, force => true,
                 mode => $mode, owner => $owner, group => $group;
         }

manifests/moduledir.pp

@@ -7,8 +7,6 @@ class common::moduledir {
     # module-local data, e.g. for constructing config files
     file{$module_dir_path:
         ensure => directory,
-        source => "puppet:///modules/common/modules/",
-        ignore => '.ignore',
         recurse => true, purge => true, force => true,
         mode => 0755, owner => root, group => 0;
     }