managing applications
Bill McGonigle
bill at bfccomputing.com
Wed Jan 9 11:10:18 EST 2008
On Jan 7, 2008, at 16:55, Ben Scott wrote:
> I honestly think that documentation and discipline are just
> essential for this. "You can't comb a hairy ball smooth." If you
> carefully document everything you do, recreating it is
> straight-forward. If you don't document it, well... you reap what
> you sow. One of those harsh truths. FWIW, after 15+ years of doing
> IT, I still find myself relearning this lesson. Life is a persistent
> teacher.
While not arguing against documentation, static prose documentation
doesn't help me save time or labor, nor ensure correctness, all of
which I'm looking for.
Having the system well-defined in config files is what I refer to as
"live documentation", that is it fully describes the state of the
system for those conversant in the language and is essential for the
system to run. This has the advantage of never being out-of-date or
wrong if the system is working properly.
cfengine looks like it might be that tool. I'm going to go do some
reading. Thanks to Tom & Shawn for the pointer!
-Bill
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