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Looks really cool, excited to see some more detail on how it actually works! Why the new custom config file format? I've mostly found that these homegrown form

by robbles 11y ago

Looks really cool, excited to see some more detail on how it actually works! Why the new custom config file format? I've mostly found that these homegrown formats (logstash? nginx?) suffer from inconsistency and lack of flexibility, and don't have any obvious benefits. Why not use one of the following like other Hashicorp tools? - JSON/YAML, possibly with support for templating like Ansible - A Ruby DSL - A limited, but well-tested and understood format like .ini files

deleted 11y ago
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robbles 11y ago
Answering my own question after looking at the code: https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl#why https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl#why It's JSON-compatible, at least (valid JSON is valid HCL).
jweir 11y ago
The config format looks like the same format as Terraform.
- Perceptes 11y ago
  It's HCL. Same format used by Terraform and the just-announced Nomad.
davexunit 11y ago
> JSON/YAML, possibly with support for templating like Ansible When you are writing templates for your configuration files, what you've wanted all along was a real programming language.
- acveilleux 11y ago
  Yes and no, a lot of the ops folks I know peter out at pretty basic scripting and find a templating system easier.
  - XorNot 11y ago
    Actually I'd love to be able to drop down to Python in my ansible playbooks/configs but ansible modules are very different to yaml/template files for the effort.
    - andybak 11y ago
      I have some misgivings about Ansible's fundamental design choices. It's main claim to fame seems to be that it sucks less than Puppet and Chef. I used to really enjoy using Fabric. I only ever tolerated Ansible. I wonder if building on Fabric might have resulted in a better devops tool than Ansible provides.
      - akurtzhs 11y ago
        For smaller setups, I've been very happy with Fabric and the declarative configuration addon Fabtools - https://github.com/ronnix/fabtools https://github.com/ronnix/fabtools
  - davexunit 11y ago
    So we should build our most essential tools to suit the lowest common denominator? A proper programming language would allow the people that can only do basic scripting to do that, whilst allowing more advanced users to extend the system further and take full advantage of all the language's features and libraries. When those more basic users got more accustomed to the system, there would be room for them to move up that they wouldn't have if they were stuck with a nasty string-based templating language.

by robbles 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

robbles 11y ago

Answering my own question after looking at the code: https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl#why https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl#why It's JSON-compatible, at least (valid JSON is valid HCL).

jweir 11y ago

The config format looks like the same format as Terraform.

Perceptes 11y ago
It's HCL. Same format used by Terraform and the just-announced Nomad.

davexunit 11y ago

> JSON/YAML, possibly with support for templating like Ansible When you are writing templates for your configuration files, what you've wanted all along was a real programming language.

acveilleux 11y ago
Yes and no, a lot of the ops folks I know peter out at pretty basic scripting and find a templating system easier.
- XorNot 11y ago
  Actually I'd love to be able to drop down to Python in my ansible playbooks/configs but ansible modules are very different to yaml/template files for the effort.
  - andybak 11y ago
    I have some misgivings about Ansible's fundamental design choices. It's main claim to fame seems to be that it sucks less than Puppet and Chef. I used to really enjoy using Fabric. I only ever tolerated Ansible. I wonder if building on Fabric might have resulted in a better devops tool than Ansible provides.
    - akurtzhs 11y ago
      For smaller setups, I've been very happy with Fabric and the declarative configuration addon Fabtools - https://github.com/ronnix/fabtools https://github.com/ronnix/fabtools
- davexunit 11y ago
  So we should build our most essential tools to suit the lowest common denominator? A proper programming language would allow the people that can only do basic scripting to do that, whilst allowing more advanced users to extend the system further and take full advantage of all the language's features and libraries. When those more basic users got more accustomed to the system, there would be room for them to move up that they wouldn't have if they were stuck with a nasty string-based templating language.