this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
55 points (96.6% liked)

Linux

48083 readers
785 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml
nooter692@lemmy.ml
MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml
cypherpunks@lemmy.ml
cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz
55
The overlap between package managers and automation frameworks (lemy.lol)
submitted 9 months ago by matcha_addict@lemy.lol to c/linux@lemmy.ml
25 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

What do package managers do? Install packages, obviously! But that is not everything. In my opinion, package managers do enough to be characterized as general automation frameworks. For example:

  • manage configurations and configuration files
  • manage custom compilation options and flags
  • provide isolation or containerization
  • make sure a specific file is present in a specific place given specific conditions
  • change installation files or configuration based on architecture or other conditions

Not all package managers do all of the above, but you get the idea.

Nix even manages your entire setup with a single configuration file.

It occurred to me that package management could theoretically be managed by an automation framework.

What do I mean by automation framework? Ansible, chef, puppet, or Sparrow.

Now imagine if you were to use one of those package managers as an automation framework. For most of them, it would suck. (nix is a notable exception). So maybe common package managers are just bad automation frameworks?

What if we used an automation framework as a package manager? Well currently, it might also suck, but only because it lacks the package definitions. Maybe it is not a bad experiment to have a distribution managed by a modern automation framework like Sparrow.

What are the benefits?

  • usable on other distributions
  • more easily create your own packages on the fly
  • Greater customization and configurability
  • use a known programming language that is easy to read to define packages and other functions, instead of a DSL
  • your package manager can easily automate just about any task using the same syntax and framework
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] callcc@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Makes sense. I imagine the push model of Ansible had a lot to do with the speed issues? I can imagine how a solid .deb would be much more performant.

It's part of the problem, but the other part is that you have to re-do the package building all the time. Alternatively you fiddle with tags and only run part of your roles (which is a hassle anyways because ansible does not really have good abstractions that help encapsulation).

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 1 points 9 months ago

I've also struggled with Ansible tags, and said good riddance, at least for my use cases.

I ended up breaking my playbooks up into my own relatively small roles, and then reusing those, instead. It's not perfect, but I've been able to feel progress. I still usually make changes, but they're not as invasive as I have found it pretty easy to turn a role on or off.