Experimental and coming soon features in CFEngine

Pull requests for CFEngine Core, at Github, and CFEngine's issue tracker show some interesting proposals for future versions of CFEngine. Here's a quick summary for you.

TLS encryption

The proposal is to replace the current transmission encryption of CFEngine with the standard TLS protocol. I'm told that this transition will be transparent and that CFEngine will fall back to the old protocol automatically if required.

LMDB replacing TCDB

OpenLDAP's Lightning Memory-Mapped Database will replace TokyoCabinet. TokyoCabinet was disappointing in its reliability. A better DB will be welcome.

JSON data containers

If you use CSV files with CFEngine, like Evolve's own free promise library, you know that large CSV files can be cumbersome. Data represented in JSON format will be easier to manage.

Includes

There's a proposal to allow include type statements in CFEngine policy files. This will allow more dynamic policies.

It's too early for me to say when or if we'll see these features in real life. If they interest you and you have an opinion about them now is the time to voice it.