When you follow an online guide, dump a copy of the text on the page and a link in a single text file called “readme.txt”. When you create backups of the state

When you follow an online guide, dump a copy of the text on the page and a link in a single text file called “readme.txt”. When you create backups of the state of the machine (even if the backups are just tarballs sent over ssh to the other machines), include a copy of that file. Learning another DSL or desired state config system is going to be a pain because they lack a lot of things programmers like, like breakpoints, good LSPs and crucially: reproducible environments. Worse still, the DSLs shift around. I know cfengine, puppet, chef, salt and ansible. Because they keep getting replaced with cleaner abstractions over time or have a kinder eye on them from the community. Do the simple thing, document what you do to your machines. Its not sexy but you dont have to unlearn patterns or spend time trying to fix your environment just to make your docs (which now are code) work automatically.