Hi I can't be as specific as lauwersw. I've been a cfengine2 user for some time, but my experience with cfengine3 is still too small.
1) So, on a general note, and resuming what I already said in other threads, simple file editing is sometimes too hard. E.g.: placing pieces of text in a very well defined position inside a file is too difficult, and template files are too feature-poor to be 100% feasible. For computers, it may not matter where a comment or a configuration directive is placed inside a file. But configuration files are also read by humans, and providing comments and directives in the places a human expects them to be _is_ important. Placeholders or pseudo-tags are not the solution: they are workarounds, and may make a file more difficult to read. 2) Documentation as a whole is not easy to use. We have: * a bare-bones tutorial (too bare bones be really useful) * a complete reference (a bit less than 600 pages...) * a standard library reference (i.e.: the "Cfengine Open Promise Body Library" reference) * a best practices guide * a number of "Special Topics" guides (more than 30) Guess yourself how easy is to find the right path through all these documents. A reorganization is definitely needed, and a better, richer tutorial is, too. 3) Maybe connected to the previous problem: the language itself is too complicated for beginners. It would be nice to have sort of a simplified language (cfScript?), and a compiler to translate it into cfengine3 native policies. Who enters configuration management has to cope with the first "mind shift", and switch thinking from a system-per-system basis to classes of systems. The second mind shift is when they have to apply the theory using a new high level language. With both cfe2 and cfe3 it was like I hit a wall in the first weeks. If they are not resolute enough to stick with cfe, you'll switch to puppet (which is worse, in my opinion, but whose language is simpler) or something else. Simple things must be simple. Having a "language layer" over cfengine could be a way to lower cfengine's entry barrier. Other than that, I liked cfengine3 a lot so far. Ciao -- bronto _______________________________________________ Help-cfengine mailing list Help-cfengine@cfengine.org https://cfengine.org/mailman/listinfo/help-cfengine
