Regular expressions can vary from simple to WTF. Usually they tend toward the latter. What most don't realized, or are too lazy to use, is that regular expressions can be made to include friendly whitespace and comments. CFEngine is no exception.
Continue reading Build better regular expressions in CFEngine...
Part 3 of CFEngine best practices.
Continue reading CFEngine best practices: deployment, upgrades, and scaling...
Continuing on from testing best practices, let's look at other best practices to make you a CFEngine ninja.
CFEngine's autonomous automation means that your policy, mistakes and all, will be duplicated quickly to all of your hosts. --- Potentially tens of thousands of them. When I taught martial arts it was humbling to watch a class of thirty duplicate my incorrect movement. I didn't know, because I didn't test myself. In martial arts I was simply embarrassed, but in configuration management, mistakes could cost me a raise or even my job. Testing is the paramount best practice for CFEngine. Let me tell you what I have learned.