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by shadowgovt 2334 days ago
> I don't see the real difference in complexity of maintaining 12+ bash scripts instead of the same number of Docker files.

With respect, I have to assume your experience is either in an ecosystem with really strongly-established best practices for bash (and someone with the job of enforcing said practices) or your organization has no more than two or three people maintaining those dozen-plus bash scripts (and is on its way to a headache when two of those people retire at the same time and your org tries to on-board someone new to read those scripts).
2 comments
_y5hn 2333 days ago
Well-written ksh/bash is extremely light-weight, flexible, concise and easy to maintain. Changing shell or OS would be the headache, but easily outweighted by gains if used for the right jobs.
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shadowgovt 2333 days ago
Unfortunately, maintaining it requires somebody who is familiar with ksh or bash, and they are tools with Byzantine syntax by modern aesthetics. They're also more firepower than needed for the problem domain of building and maintaining deployments---they have features one doesn't need and require library support for key features in the deployment problem domain.

You can code a deployment solution in c++ also, but it's not recommended.

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matteuan 2334 days ago
You judge "with respect" my experience instead of answering to the argument. So why is it easier with Docker?
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cbushko 2334 days ago
It is easier because you can actually build that functionality locally with a docker container to test it out.

This is coming from someone that spent 10+ years maintaining a build system that was a mix of makefiles and shell scripts. It can be done but I don't know if it should.

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shadowgovt 2334 days ago
Because a Docker config makes it hard to accidentally wipe your filesystem instead of building a Docker image. Shell scripts make that less difficult (and any solution using shell to do something similar to Docker will have a bespoke layer of in-house code that should be correct but will require maintenance by your team to make sure nobody makes a change that turns it into a filesystem-eater).
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