> one that uses Unix commands instead of ruby libraries, for example - will probably eventually replace Puppet (and Chef, and the others).
I hope not... There's a huge value in being able to operate on proper data types easily. I can get a hash and output a corresponding .ini-like file in a couple of lines in chef. This would be a nightmare to do in shell.
that's not the part I meant! Clearly we need good programming languages to manipulate data.
I just think that for the part that touches the OS, using shell commands and piping their output to a parser is more reliable than the equivalent ruby libs.
I hope not... There's a huge value in being able to operate on proper data types easily. I can get a hash and output a corresponding .ini-like file in a couple of lines in chef. This would be a nightmare to do in shell.