I can't believe the amount of stuff you guys have written while I was
taking a week off :-)
I'm not going to leap in to any detail, but here's some random points
after reading all the posts.
Sorry if this doesn't make sense in isolation ....
(*) Tom's slides are on the lssconf site, along with all the notes
from the previous workshops:
http://homepages.informatics.ed.ac.uk/group/lssconf
(*) The lssconf workshop is not about "theory" - it never has been,
and there have never been any theory discussions. On the other hand,
it is not a "how to" about specific tools. It is about "principles"
which is what helps people to apply tools in a useful way to
practical situations, and to design better tools. The workshops are
intended for specialists. The tutorials are the place for people to
learn about topics.
(*) I hope that people are not swayed by the amount of tool
advertising on this list - the amount of mention for some tools seems
to be out of proportion to their contribution.
(*) I don't always agree with Alva :-) But I think he has made some
very good posts describing exactly what I think we should be
addressing - in particular, this is spot-on:
I think one reason for lack of acceptance is that a tool can't do your
thinking for you. Configuration management is a practice, not a tool.
Tools can help or hinder it. The thought process is what matters, and
that thought process is slow to develop and is not particularly helped
by current tools, that strive to "do things for one" rather than
"educating one" about the impact of one's actions and practices.
In fact, "sophisticated" tools based upon complex thought processes
"of the developer" do a poor job of justifying themselves to the
novice, who sees the extra work as "busywork" without meaning.
(*) If you can say ""I have literally never worked at an organization
that had any clue what its configurations should be", then you have a
people problem, not a technical one, and I don't understand how a
tool is supposed to solve this.
(*) I really don't want to plug my SAGE book, and I certainly
wouldn't want to say that it was "definitive" about the subject, but
it does contain a lot of background, such as the difference between
configuration specification and deployment - it might help to
establish a common starting point if people were aware of this.
(*) Configuration management is not just about saving effort. It is
about lots of other things like making sure that your configurations
are "correct" - ie. that you won't get security holes, or unexpected
failures. (read the book :-)
Mmm. I'm sure there is more, but I don't want to provoke another
day's reading :-)
Paul
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