Re: declarative (config file) way idea of handling the OS by way of the old system
Dan Ritter wrote:
>>> You can do it with puppet, chef, ansible, salt...
>>>
>>> You can go further into it with guix and nix.
>>>
>>> It can be quite a lot of work
>>
>> Okay, but why so, since it looks like the task to be done
>> is just a config file that's iterated by a script and
>> boiled down to suitable commands that are well-known, not
>> the least because we are used to do them manually?
>
> For the very obvious reason that there is one major
> additional task to go from "I have configured this machine
> the way I want it" to "This machine's configuration is now
> encoded in a language I needed to learn for the purpose" --
> and a second task to go to "and it can be generalized to run
> on multiple machines".
>
> So if you're doing it for one machine, you effectively have
> to do it twice; if you're doing it for N machines, you have
> to do it about 2 and a half times. If N is much larger than
> 3, you win.
... what do you mean?
It's the same package manager on all N system, you only need
to do it once.
Also, there is no need to encode the configuration in any
advanced "language", it can be basic configuration like for
xpdf or mpv or whatever.
OTOH if you want a real programming language and environment
for configuration and extension (e.g., Elisp for Emacs, Lua
for mpv etc) that's doable as well, no doubt.
--
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal
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