Config stuff and glump (as my introduction)

Toshio Kuratomi a.badger at gmail.com
Wed Jan 3 21:37:57 UTC 2007


On Tue, 2007-01-02 at 21:40 -0600, Mike McGrath wrote: 
> On 1/2/07, Konstantin Ryabitsev <icon at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> > On 02/01/07, David Lutterkort <dlutter at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> > Sure, but I try to avoid using tools that I can't fix, especially
> > tools that are integral to the functioning of my systems. Especially
> > since it's the ONLY tool that requires ruby.
> 
> I have to say this is a pretty big minus, not only do we not have ruby
> installed anywhere in our environment that I'm aware of but for the
> most part we're a python shop.  It's still not a no for puppet, just a
> big strike against in my mind.

This is a minus but I'm not sure it's the huge minus that everyone makes
it out to be.  I have several reasons for thinking that:

Why do we need to hack the tool?
* We'd need to hack puppet if we ran into a bug and the upstream
developers weren't very responsive.  With an active and responsive
upstream this is _less_ of an issue.  In some ways, this is like the
open source vs closed source argument for managers.  Just because the
manager can't hack on it doesn't mean there aren't other people who are
willing to because it's open source.  Similarly, just because we aren't
ruby gurus doesn't mean that there isn't a dedicated community of
hackers surrounding puppet. 
* We would need to hack puppet if it doesn't have features that we need.
We're currently moving from an extremely simple system.  It should be
pretty easy to determine if puppet will suit our present needs.  We also
want to allow room to grow.  For that we should be comparing puppet's
features to its competitors.

Would it be any easier to hack on if it were (C|shell|perl)?
* If it were written in C we'd all be capable of hacking on it but
wouldn't have much fun or be as productive as in python.  Ruby isn't
python but it shares a lot more with it than with C.  I learned python
by staring at other people's source code.  It's not so far fetched to do
the same thing with ruby.

Are we really devoid of ruby hackers?
* David, at least is quite knowledgable, not only with ruby but also
with puppet but I don't know how much time he has to spend with us.  He
is the maintainer of our FE package, though, so fixing bugs is something
he'll be keen to do for more than just us.
* puppet is being used in other areas of Red Hat, are there other Fedora
Infrastructure people (from outside of Red Hat as well as inside) who
are ruby/puppet hackers?

-Toshio
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