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philosophy.md

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Module Philosophy

There are various processors out there that ingest a manifest and produce a client library. You can get client libraries for Java, Ruby, .NET, etc. However, for deployment tools a library is not enough. These tools do not care about an abstraction layer because they are not scripting languages.

Convergence To Desired State

Our modules care about converging objects from any state into a final desired state specified by the administrator. The administrator declares their intent in a product specific DSL, and the infrastructure is supposed to make it happen. For example consider that the administrator declared:

gcompute_instance { 'my-middle-tier-vm':
  ensure => running,
  zone   => 'us-central1-a',
}

If the machine is not running, the infrastructure is supposed to make it happen: start if stopped, resume if paused, restore if archived. Also if the machine is not on the us-central1-a zone, it should move it there. If something described above cannot be accomplished the tool will fail with a clear and actionable message of why it failed and what the administrator needs to do to correct the issue.

Idempotency

Unlike scripting languages, declarative tools (like Chef or Puppet) specify intent and the system's final behavior. So that means if the system is already in the desired state nothing should happen or be changed, or attempted to be changed, even if the final result is the same.

Consider the following bash script:

#!/bin/bash
apt-get install apache2
cp my-template.conf /etc/httpd/conf.d/25-mysite.conf
chmod 644 /etc/httpd/conf.d/25-mysite.conf
chattr -i /etc/httpd/conf.d/25-mysite.conf

In the simple script above we're installing Apache, copying our site definitions and protecting the file. Note that you cannot run that script twice without it failing as chattr prevents the next cp to work. Also note that if apache2 is already installed, although apt-get will not attempt to install it again, the full apt-get install process will happen again. For example, catalog being updated or cleaned, block until another installation is in progress, add installation to system log, etc.

So if you do the following in Puppet:

package { 'apache2':
  ensure => installed,
}

file { '/etc/httpd/conf.d/25-mysite.conf':
  ensure => file,
  mode   => '0644',
}

chattr::attribute_add { '/etc/httpd/conf.d/25-mysite.conf':
  attribute => 'i',
  require   => File['/etc/httpd/conf.d/25-mysite.conf'],
}

Puppet/Chef will not attempt to start installing apache2 if it is already there (apt-get will not even be called). Similarly if the properties of the configuration file are correct (mode, immutability bit, etc) Puppet/Chef will not attempt to change anything. This leads to a cleaner execution.