[arch-releng] Helping with AIF

[Alexander Rødseth]

Hi,


2012/7/31 Dieter Plaetinck <dieter at 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)