3 ms·

The one that springs to mind for me is terraform. We made the decision to use it in production and it is costing us a lot of time and money. It feels like it wi

The one that springs to mind for me is terraform. We made the decision to use it in production and it is costing us a lot of time and money. It feels like it will continue costing us a lot of time and money for a long time. It 100% feels like alpha software, yet it's being hyped and overhyped by the tech community. I personally think using it was the right call regardless (the alternatives are worse in the long run), but it's such a massive upfront investment, I couldn't recommend it. One thing though: > tools that change their behavior based on files in one of the parent directories You mean like git? I agree with your general sentiment but you're backing it up very weakly, with essentially irrelevant things. Terminal interactivity is not a bad thing; TUI software is built for humans as well as machines and well behaved components will detect when they are not in a tty.

iamthemuffinman 10y ago
What issues do you have with Terraform? A few people in my org are considering implementing it.
- scrollaway 10y ago
  Oh where to start... The state file is atrocious, a constant source of pain. It is hard to set up in the first place, it is hard to import resources into it, it is hard to rename resources within it. Sometimes, resources don't canonicalize correctly and will always tell you there's something to modify, even though there isn't. Other times, resources don't destroy properly because you are using some untested settings within them. "It's alpha software" is the best description I can give. It has a ton of rough edges. The pros: It's decently fast, and a lot more workable than the alternatives (cloudformation or simply tracking stuff by hand). It supports more than just AWS, including fairly obscure stuff like Cloudflare DNS records. It's conceptually solid. Don't say no to it outright, but you should know what you are getting into.
  - iamthemuffinman 10y ago
    That's interesting. These guys tend to have pretty good luck with it - https://segment.com/blog/the-segment-aws-stack/ https://segment.com/blog/the-segment-aws-stack/
    - scrollaway 10y ago
      Seen the article before. It's not wrong - Terraform is pretty great. But it's leaving out the parts where a lot of stuff breaks, behaves in unexpected ways, is missing critical features etc. A lot of engineering time has to be dedicated to terraform if you're going to use it in a serious stack (and it's overkill as just a toy).
      - iamthemuffinman 10y ago
        I'll keep that in mind. Thanks!
  - manojlds 10y ago
    Been using Terraform in anger, and I agree with your statement. It is not for everyone, not yet anyway, but I love using it. Btw, Terraform 0.7 comes with initial support for import and state manipulation commands.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    Thanks for posting this. So it sounds like the main source of frustration is really just the state file? Is that accurate? I have heard this from someone else. Also you mentioned that Terraform was better than the alternatives. Could I ask what other alternatives you looked at and why you ended up choosing Terraform over them? The reason I ask is that I am also considering Terraform. However other providers also seem to support more than just AWS and are fast enough.
  - jasonlotito 10y ago
    > and a lot more workable than the alternatives That is pretty much it right there. I've yet to see another solution that beats it. Warts and all, it's the best I've seen.
  - geggam 10y ago
    The syntax abstraction of cloud formation alone is worth using terraform for me. The state file I delegate to tearing the infrastructure down. No more. Use the AWS API and your config management API ( chef ) to manage the state of the systems.
jwr 10y ago
> > tools that change their behavior based on files in one of the parent directories > You mean like git? In case of interactive tools like git it is something you would expect. But it came to me as a rather huge surprise that if you type "npm install" in a directory where you just unpacked sources, what will actually happen depends on what exists in the PARENT directory. Not to mention writing to the parent directory. I am not alone in being caught off-guard by this: https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/2896 https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/2896 I'd say this is unacceptable in case of tools that are "make-like".
- qaq 10y ago
  what's make like about a package manager?
  - IncRnd 10y ago
    Do you really think that npm doesn't build software using dependency management?
    - qaq 10y ago
      It sure does "build software" but it's primary function is package management. We could call Emacs an email client by the same token. An equivalent of make in js world are Gulp, Grunt etc.
- hugozap 10y ago
  It's an npm convention according to the dependency resolution algorithm, not a flaw. If you have a .git folder in the parent directory you also get different/possibly unexpected behavior. It's not unacceptable if you have read how it works. Both cases are documented.
- rhinoceraptor 10y ago
  That seems pretty normal, if I'm in a subdirectory of my project and install a dependency, it makes sense that it would install it in the root of my project where the node_modules/ folder is. When I use git in a subdirectory of my project, it looks for .git/ up the directory tree until it finds it.
liveoneggs 10y ago
I really want to use terraform but after dealing with the collection of hacks called vagrant I am not so excited to do so. (speaking of randomly merging up parent directories)

iamthemuffinman 10y ago

What issues do you have with Terraform? A few people in my org are considering implementing it.

scrollaway 10y ago
Oh where to start... The state file is atrocious, a constant source of pain. It is hard to set up in the first place, it is hard to import resources into it, it is hard to rename resources within it. Sometimes, resources don't canonicalize correctly and will always tell you there's something to modify, even though there isn't. Other times, resources don't destroy properly because you are using some untested settings within them. "It's alpha software" is the best description I can give. It has a ton of rough edges. The pros: It's decently fast, and a lot more workable than the alternatives (cloudformation or simply tracking stuff by hand). It supports more than just AWS, including fairly obscure stuff like Cloudflare DNS records. It's conceptually solid. Don't say no to it outright, but you should know what you are getting into.
- iamthemuffinman 10y ago
  That's interesting. These guys tend to have pretty good luck with it - https://segment.com/blog/the-segment-aws-stack/ https://segment.com/blog/the-segment-aws-stack/
  - scrollaway 10y ago
    Seen the article before. It's not wrong - Terraform is pretty great. But it's leaving out the parts where a lot of stuff breaks, behaves in unexpected ways, is missing critical features etc. A lot of engineering time has to be dedicated to terraform if you're going to use it in a serious stack (and it's overkill as just a toy).
    - iamthemuffinman 10y ago
      I'll keep that in mind. Thanks!
- manojlds 10y ago
  Been using Terraform in anger, and I agree with your statement. It is not for everyone, not yet anyway, but I love using it. Btw, Terraform 0.7 comes with initial support for import and state manipulation commands.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  Thanks for posting this. So it sounds like the main source of frustration is really just the state file? Is that accurate? I have heard this from someone else. Also you mentioned that Terraform was better than the alternatives. Could I ask what other alternatives you looked at and why you ended up choosing Terraform over them? The reason I ask is that I am also considering Terraform. However other providers also seem to support more than just AWS and are fast enough.
- jasonlotito 10y ago
  > and a lot more workable than the alternatives That is pretty much it right there. I've yet to see another solution that beats it. Warts and all, it's the best I've seen.
- geggam 10y ago
  The syntax abstraction of cloud formation alone is worth using terraform for me. The state file I delegate to tearing the infrastructure down. No more. Use the AWS API and your config management API ( chef ) to manage the state of the systems.

jwr 10y ago

> > tools that change their behavior based on files in one of the parent directories > You mean like git? In case of interactive tools like git it is something you would expect. But it came to me as a rather huge surprise that if you type "npm install" in a directory where you just unpacked sources, what will actually happen depends on what exists in the PARENT directory. Not to mention writing to the parent directory. I am not alone in being caught off-guard by this: https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/2896 https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/2896 I'd say this is unacceptable in case of tools that are "make-like".

qaq 10y ago
what's make like about a package manager?
- IncRnd 10y ago
  Do you really think that npm doesn't build software using dependency management?
  - qaq 10y ago
    It sure does "build software" but it's primary function is package management. We could call Emacs an email client by the same token. An equivalent of make in js world are Gulp, Grunt etc.
hugozap 10y ago
It's an npm convention according to the dependency resolution algorithm, not a flaw. If you have a .git folder in the parent directory you also get different/possibly unexpected behavior. It's not unacceptable if you have read how it works. Both cases are documented.
rhinoceraptor 10y ago
That seems pretty normal, if I'm in a subdirectory of my project and install a dependency, it makes sense that it would install it in the root of my project where the node_modules/ folder is. When I use git in a subdirectory of my project, it looks for .git/ up the directory tree until it finds it.

liveoneggs 10y ago

I really want to use terraform but after dealing with the collection of hacks called vagrant I am not so excited to do so. (speaking of randomly merging up parent directories)