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A Simple Dream

Everyone working in configuration management would like to find a way to simplify and perhaps obsolete this dreary job. The ‘impossible dream’ is that everyone writing configuration scripts can use the work of the whole community instead of re-inventing the wheel for each site and purpose. But so far, while configuration tools proliferate, it has been difficult to convince people to distribute and maintain reusable scripts for configuring systems and implementing common services. There seem to be “too many options,” “too many system dependencies,” and “too many site-specific assumptions.”

This was written in 1999. Then the XML holy grail crap became popular and managing organized complexity became even more painful.