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Yeah it’s just terrible. If Amazon knew what was good they’d just replace it with almost anything else. Heck just got all in on terraform and call it a day.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
stogot 1y ago
Isn’t that what CDK was for?
mdaniel 1y ago
This may be heresy in an AWS thread, but as a concept Bicep actually isn't terrible: https://github.com/Azure/bicep/blob/v0.37.4/src/Bicep.Cli.E2eTests/src/examples/101/aks.prod/main.bicep https://github.com/Azure/bicep/blob/v0.37.4/src/Bicep.Cli.E2... It does compile down to Azure Resource Manager's json DSL, so in that way close to Troposphere I guess, only both sides are official and not just some rando project that happens to emit yaml/json The implementation, of course, is ... very Azure, so I don't mean to praise using it, merely that it's a better idea than rawdogging json
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  I’ve heard so many bad things about bicep on Azure that I’m not convinced it’s an upgrade over TF. The syntax does look nicer but sadly that’s just a superficial improvement.
mdaniel 1y ago
As for "go all in on terraform," I pray to all that is holy every night that terraform rots in the hell that spawned it. And that's not even getting into the rug pull parts, I mean the very idea of 1. I need a goddamn CLI to run it (versus giving someone a URL they can load in their tenant and have running resources afterward) 1. the goddamn CLI mandates live cloud credentials, but then stright-up never uses them to check a goddamn thing it intends to do to my cloud control plane You may say "running 'plan' does" and I can offer 50+ examples clearly demonstrating that it does not catch the most facepalm of bugs 1. related to that, having a state file that believes it knows what exists in the world is just ludicrous and pain made manifest 1. a tool that thinks nuking things is an appropriate fix ... whew. Although I guess in our new LLM world, saying such things makes me the old person who should get onboard the "nothing matters" train and the language is a dumpster, imho
- SvenL 1y ago
  Amen, and I would add to that list “no, just because you use terraform doesn’t mean you can simply switch between cloud providers”.
  - hnlmorg 1y ago
    Is there any IaC solutions where you can “simply switch between cloud providers”? This isn’t a limitation of TF, it’s an intended consequence of cloud vendor lock in
    - mdaniel 1y ago
      I believe the usual uninformed thinking is "terraform exists outside of AWS, so I can move off of AWS" versus "we have used CF or Bicep, now we're stuck" kind of deal Which is to say both of you are correct, but OP was highlighting the improper expectations of "if we write in TF, sure it sucks balls but we can then just pivot to $other_cloud" not realizing it's untrue and now you've used a rusty paintbrush as a screwdriver
      - hnlmorg 1y ago
        I don’t think that expectation exists with anyone with even the slightest understanding of IaC and systems. But maybe I’ve just been blessed to work with people who aren’t complete idiots?
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  There's a lot wrong with Terraform but I don't think you're being at all fair with your specific critisims here: > 1. I need a goddamn CLI to run it (versus giving someone a URL they can load in their tenant and have running resources afterward) CloudFormation is the only IaC that supports "running as a URL" and that's only because it's an AWS native solution. And CloudFormation is a hell of a lot more painful to write and slower to iterate on. So you're not any better off for using CF. What usually happens with TF is you'd build a deploy pipeline. Thus you can test via the CLI then deploy via CI/CD. So you're not limited to just the CLI. But personally, I don't see the CLI as a limitation. > the goddamn CLI mandates live cloud credentials, but then stright-up never uses them to check a goddamn thing it intends to do to my cloud control plane All IaC requires live cloud credentials. It would be impossible for them to work without live credentials ;) Terraform does do a lot of checking. I do agree there is a lot that the plan misses though. That's definitely frustrating. But it's a side effect of cloud vendors having arbitrary conditions that are hard to define and forever changing. You run into the same problem with any tool you'd use to provision. Heck, even manually deploying stuff from the web console sometimes takes a couple of tweaks to get right. > 1. related to that, having a state file that believes it knows what exists in the world is just ludicrous and pain made manifest This is a very strange complaint. Having a state file is the bare minimum any IaC NEEDS for it to be considered a viable option. If you don't like IaC tracking state then you're really little better off than managing resources manually. > a tool that thinks nuking things is an appropriate fix ... whew. This is grossly unfair. Terraform only destroys resources when: 1. you remove those resources from the source. Which is sensible because you're telling Terraform you no longer want those resources 2. when you make a change that AWS doesn't support doing on live resources. Thus the limitation isn't Terraform, it is AWS In either scenario, the destroy is explicit in the plan and expected behaviour.
hnlmorg 1y ago
They do contribute to the AWS provider for Terraform. Also that have CDK which is a framework for writing IaC in Java/TypeScript, Go, Python, etc.
- gigatexal 1y ago
  Meh. The CDK doesn’t look terrible. It’s still not ideal. But even if this compiles to a mess of CF it’s still better than writing CF by hand and that’s only because CF is so bad to begin with. https://dev.to/kelvinskell/getting-started-with-aws-cdk-in-python-a-comprehensive-and-easy-to-follow-guide-2k44 https://dev.to/kelvinskell/getting-started-with-aws-cdk-in-p...

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

stogot 1y ago

Isn’t that what CDK was for?

mdaniel 1y ago

This may be heresy in an AWS thread, but as a concept Bicep actually isn't terrible: https://github.com/Azure/bicep/blob/v0.37.4/src/Bicep.Cli.E2eTests/src/examples/101/aks.prod/main.bicep https://github.com/Azure/bicep/blob/v0.37.4/src/Bicep.Cli.E2... It does compile down to Azure Resource Manager's json DSL, so in that way close to Troposphere I guess, only both sides are official and not just some rando project that happens to emit yaml/json The implementation, of course, is ... very Azure, so I don't mean to praise using it, merely that it's a better idea than rawdogging json

hnlmorg 1y ago
I’ve heard so many bad things about bicep on Azure that I’m not convinced it’s an upgrade over TF. The syntax does look nicer but sadly that’s just a superficial improvement.

mdaniel 1y ago

As for "go all in on terraform," I pray to all that is holy every night that terraform rots in the hell that spawned it. And that's not even getting into the rug pull parts, I mean the very idea of 1. I need a goddamn CLI to run it (versus giving someone a URL they can load in their tenant and have running resources afterward) 1. the goddamn CLI mandates live cloud credentials, but then stright-up never uses them to check a goddamn thing it intends to do to my cloud control plane You may say "running 'plan' does" and I can offer 50+ examples clearly demonstrating that it does not catch the most facepalm of bugs 1. related to that, having a state file that believes it knows what exists in the world is just ludicrous and pain made manifest 1. a tool that thinks nuking things is an appropriate fix ... whew. Although I guess in our new LLM world, saying such things makes me the old person who should get onboard the "nothing matters" train and the language is a dumpster, imho

SvenL 1y ago
Amen, and I would add to that list “no, just because you use terraform doesn’t mean you can simply switch between cloud providers”.
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  Is there any IaC solutions where you can “simply switch between cloud providers”? This isn’t a limitation of TF, it’s an intended consequence of cloud vendor lock in
  - mdaniel 1y ago
    I believe the usual uninformed thinking is "terraform exists outside of AWS, so I can move off of AWS" versus "we have used CF or Bicep, now we're stuck" kind of deal Which is to say both of you are correct, but OP was highlighting the improper expectations of "if we write in TF, sure it sucks balls but we can then just pivot to $other_cloud" not realizing it's untrue and now you've used a rusty paintbrush as a screwdriver
    - hnlmorg 1y ago
      I don’t think that expectation exists with anyone with even the slightest understanding of IaC and systems. But maybe I’ve just been blessed to work with people who aren’t complete idiots?
hnlmorg 1y ago
There's a lot wrong with Terraform but I don't think you're being at all fair with your specific critisims here: > 1. I need a goddamn CLI to run it (versus giving someone a URL they can load in their tenant and have running resources afterward) CloudFormation is the only IaC that supports "running as a URL" and that's only because it's an AWS native solution. And CloudFormation is a hell of a lot more painful to write and slower to iterate on. So you're not any better off for using CF. What usually happens with TF is you'd build a deploy pipeline. Thus you can test via the CLI then deploy via CI/CD. So you're not limited to just the CLI. But personally, I don't see the CLI as a limitation. > the goddamn CLI mandates live cloud credentials, but then stright-up never uses them to check a goddamn thing it intends to do to my cloud control plane All IaC requires live cloud credentials. It would be impossible for them to work without live credentials ;) Terraform does do a lot of checking. I do agree there is a lot that the plan misses though. That's definitely frustrating. But it's a side effect of cloud vendors having arbitrary conditions that are hard to define and forever changing. You run into the same problem with any tool you'd use to provision. Heck, even manually deploying stuff from the web console sometimes takes a couple of tweaks to get right. > 1. related to that, having a state file that believes it knows what exists in the world is just ludicrous and pain made manifest This is a very strange complaint. Having a state file is the bare minimum any IaC NEEDS for it to be considered a viable option. If you don't like IaC tracking state then you're really little better off than managing resources manually. > a tool that thinks nuking things is an appropriate fix ... whew. This is grossly unfair. Terraform only destroys resources when: 1. you remove those resources from the source. Which is sensible because you're telling Terraform you no longer want those resources 2. when you make a change that AWS doesn't support doing on live resources. Thus the limitation isn't Terraform, it is AWS In either scenario, the destroy is explicit in the plan and expected behaviour.

hnlmorg 1y ago

They do contribute to the AWS provider for Terraform. Also that have CDK which is a framework for writing IaC in Java/TypeScript, Go, Python, etc.

gigatexal 1y ago
Meh. The CDK doesn’t look terrible. It’s still not ideal. But even if this compiles to a mess of CF it’s still better than writing CF by hand and that’s only because CF is so bad to begin with. https://dev.to/kelvinskell/getting-started-with-aws-cdk-in-python-a-comprehensive-and-easy-to-follow-guide-2k44 https://dev.to/kelvinskell/getting-started-with-aws-cdk-in-p...