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  This has the advantage of never being out-of-date or  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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