#terraform-tool

without jsonnet.

just use another tool for the language part of the problem

and do deployment with terraform

I can do that with my tfhlp too

but the point of "doing it right ™" is not to require hacks.

and that's the whole point I'm bringing.

i think it's nice modularity to keep the two things separate

they have nothing in common really

the language aspect is reusable

the GCE API has metadata.

and terraform can be driven by automatic config generation, e.g. CD tools, in which case the language part is not necessary

this metadata is a data store.

it is a totally different type of data than all the rest that you define via the API.

because *you* can use it to store your data.

and access it from the instance.

but if you use terraform

you lose that flexibility.

Then the metadata becomes static, and you're not free to define anything yourself.

you have to declare it first in the tf file; and then you MUST define it.

only if you use terraform in that rigid way

so, that is an anti-feature.

how can you use it in a different way?

generate the json for it

with jsonnet?

with whatever youw ant

yeah okay

with !terraform?

there are about half a dozen general purpose config langauges out there

yeah

use jinja if you want

piling things up is not the solution, imho.

I'm only bringing the issue up because I truly think it's the right way to do it.

that's how devops works

piling things up?

text editor, compiler, build tool, testing framework, continuous integration, deployment, monitoring

yeah

it's all an assembly of discrete tools

but that's not piling.

it's UNIX.

how is this any different

piping tools is UNIX.

this is different because terraform isn't a filter.

not even in the semantics.

which is what we are talking about.

a filter is a function

you can pipe into things that have side-effects

like netcat

terrafom is a procedure, returning void.

the main reason this is even remotely difficult is that terraform can't take the tf on stdin

that i know of

so you have to write to a temporary file

but in the scheme of difficult problems to solve, that is ranked just under "make myself a nice cup of tea"

Spark: if terraform was taking stdin as data I would stfu

tbh it is annoying that it just slurps up all the tf files in the current dir and fuses the together

it'd be good to have a commandline arg to specify them explicitly

nah

it'd be cool to take stdin.

And let the tool be a filter.

and to be honest

I'd like to have a tool that takes a file as input, and generates API calls as output.

then you just netcat that to the API.

done.

that would be UNIX.

well it does more than that

yeah

more is less.

(works both way)

it does API calls, interprets the results, diffs with state, builds a plan

yeah, systemd also does "more"

</troll>

executing that plan could be a separate tool, but there's not much point because it involves calling pretty much the same APIs as were needed to build the plan

well, in IT, there are two different schools

1. the UNIX people

2. the rest

there would be little value in terraform if it just converted a large json file into lots of 'create' api calls for each part of that json file

the UNIX people know the value of filters, because they can plug things like lego

the non-UNIX people don't like filters because the require you to plug things like lego.

and they prefer to use one tool for everything.

hashicorp tools are pretty modular though

not in the UNIX sense.

I'm not saying you do things wrong.

well, unix isn't distributed

wat?

wait, wat?!

how?!

pipe is for IPC, not communicating with highly available services like consul

high availablility is a scam.

marketing scam

UNIX *IS* high available from the ground up, from the beginning.

it's not because some things have been done wrong that the whole idea is.

otherwise you can say that 100% of the software is done wrong.

don't think unix responds very well to a power cut

okay

to keep things at the same scale

no, that's the point

I don't think terraform responds very well to a cloud-provider cut.

and yes, that's the point.

it needs to handle a zone failure

DNS zone?

i'm not sure it has the required features for that right now

no, availability zone

"it"?

UNIX?

terraform

ah

yeah, thanks for clearing that up :)

cloud provider SLAs are defined in terms of availability zones

yeah

nah but I'm not saying that the marketing bs is your fault

not at all

you're merely making something shitty a bit more unix.

I don't think you can easily tell Terraform "termporarily ignore all resources in a particular zone"

but anyway

I don't have the experience to convince you

but if you could do that, you could absolutely continue to manage infrastructure during a zone outage

look, I totally like what terraform is doing, but not how.

so yeah, in a nutshell, I miss the UNIX aspect.

and yes, I think UNIX is highly available.

It's missing stuff

old sometimes

like sysvinit.

but that's no reason to replace it by broken shit like systemd (I'm not saying that terraform is broken shit - don't get me wrong)

I'm just saying that when you replace software, you have much higher responsability than when you modify software.

and terraform is replacing softare: diff is a/dev/null b/terraform

I appreciate the passion being displayed here, but please try to convey it without profanity

so you define the first thing to be there.

catsby: yeah, sorry v_v

at least I'm interested in the matter.

I'll keep the swearing down.

and just to answer < Spark> pipe is for IPC

yeah. And when you use an API, what do you do? IPC.

the whole cloud thing can just be summarized in one sentence: add 1% of features, rename it.

like docker.

you are ranting now :)

yeah.

bad day, I told ya.

sorry, I grow older than expected.

not wiser, just older.

hi! where can I view the terrafom generated graphs??? can I view beautifuly rendered graphs with some app?

blackjid: hi! terraform generates graphviz DOT format, which can be piped into the graphviz command line tool to generate images in various formats - there are details on the doc page for `terraform graph` http://www.terraform.io/docs/commands/graph.html

sorry about the cuestion, I did rememebered that it was in the docs, but I couldn't find it....

Is there any javascript/svg library you know where I can view the graphs, besides graphviz?

sounds like somebody is making a web frontend to terraform :)