Hi, 2012/7/31 Dieter Plaetinck <dieter@plaetinck.be>:
there's a bunch of configuration management tools written for this use case already. like chef, puppet, ansible. many of these concerns are relatively easy to abstract for multiple distributions, so writting a new tool that only targets Arch is not a good idea imho.
All of the tools you mention requires several dependencies, cover completely different use cases from what I wrote about and are needlessly complex for what I had in mind, even ansible. In addition, it's not like the space for configuration tools is crowded and out of axes and variables to compete on. In short, I completely disagree with you on this. (And this is not a case of NIH). More momentum is needed, not less. As I understand, you have resigned as a developer and is not interested in working on this or something like this in any case.
an installation of any system should put only the basic system in place (incl. a config management tool), everything else should be done by configuration management. this makes it easier to alter the configuration of a machine long after it has been installed.
I think this is nice in theory, but a failure in practice. For example, if someone wishes to change all the partitions from ReiserFS to ext4, they reinstall. Yes, it's possible to do it in other ways, but what a cludge of a configuration manager that would be. People reinstall and this should be made easier. Focusing on managing the post-installation configuration has proved to result in distro-specific configuration tools that are overkill compared to just editing a configuration text file and get it done with. Making the installation quick and easy, without users repeating themselves, is what should be done.
configuration management should not be tied to only the installation process.
Configuration management should only be tied to the installation process. For the rest, there's /etc. -- Best regards, Alexander Rødseth Arch Linux Trusted User (xyproto on IRC, trontonic on AUR)