I don't think we need to go too deep on this cloud-init vs Ignition thread; but you
have a great message here and I just want to clarify some points, everything else you said
here is fair/accurate/relevant from my PoV.
On Wed, Jan 5, 2022, at 10:41 AM, David Duncan wrote:
In most of those
cases it has mostly been replaced in an effort to decrease boot time and
limit functionality to force the configuration time into the user space
instead of prior to instance service checks or replace the slower python
with a compiled language like go.
In the case of Ignition, that's not quite accurate. I was not personally involved in
the creation of Ignition, but this document lays it all out:
https://coreos.github.io/ignition/rationale/
In particular, I don't think the boot speed or programming languages were ever a big
part of the argument. To pick one thing from that list, the Ignition philosopy of running
in the initramfs meaning you avoid whole large classes of race conditions of trying to
re-configure the system in the middle of boot was a primary component. (OK this does
lead into the language thing a bit I guess because no one sane wants Python in their
initramfs, but it's really not about speed)