Vlad: Opinions

These are opinions by the release engineer, Daniel Kionka:

• Why Vlad is better than Capistrano:
  • Less is more. I don't want to learn a new language. I have to know how rake works anyway, so I would rather learn the restrictions of rake and the Vlad additions than learning something "better".
  • Less is more. Vlad has fewer package dependencies, which is important when changing the master image used for the production farm and developer sandboxes.
• Other alternatives to Vlad:
  • I love make, but you can't beat writing custom deploy code in the same language you are developing in.
  • ant allows customizing, but similar to Capistrano, you have to learn another language.
  • rush is a RUby SHell. You could write deploy scripts using Ruby, but it requires setting up Rush on all destination hosts first.
  • CTL is a distributed control dispatching framework and toolset. It is much more than a deploy system.
  • The deploy system at mywaves was originally part of the cfengine environment used to maintain the network.
• What it takes to be an alternative to Vlad:
  • Dependencies: You need to be able to define a hierarchy of conditional tasks. (make, ant)
  • Remote execution: You need to be able to run commands on remote hosts in parallel. (rush, CTL, cfengine)
• What I do not like about Vlad:
  • No wiki -- I should not have to use my own site to write all this.
  • Too much emphasis on built-in commands. I suppose a simple web site can use them, but any large site requires custom rules. See Deploy Steps.

Daniel's blog on Vlad

Back to Vlad page.