Re: Need 'UncommentAndSetValue' or some such

[Brendan Strejcek]

David Masterson wrote:

> I think CFEngine implements two things -- policies and protocols.
> Policies are the answers to "what type of system is this?" Protocols
> are the answers to "how do I implement a policy?"

I would describe this as "current state discovery", "desired state
discovery", delta computation, and then state change (hopefully from
current -> desired).

You probably want this kind of cycle per task to avoid problems like
user names being resolved to UIDs at parse time before they exist (for
example, if a different task is to ensure that the user exists and has
the correct qualities).

> My question is has anyone given thought to producing generic protocols
> for CFEngine that could be used everywhere (within the assumptions of
> the protocol)?

Well, there is this mailing list and http://cfwiki.org. Post as many
of your policy fragments or modules as you feel comfortable with. :-)
For some reason the cfengine community seems unable to come up with a
CPAN-like repository of useful policy files. One would at least expect
to see more sharing of modules (if not methods, since they showed up
relatively recently in cfengine and many still find them hard to use).

Best,
Brendan

--
Senior System Administrator
The University of Chicago
Department of Computer Science
http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/people/brendan