by Ferenc Erki
We consider enabling graceful bootstrapping as one of our main guiding principles around Rex, the friendly automation framework.
While our How to get started with Rex page provides a good initial set of concepts, I wondered about the minimal set of features that already proves useful in practice. I find this especially interesting when using Rex from a cronjob or in a CI/CD pipeline.
Let’s see what I found through this exercise in minimalism.
Rex, the friendly automation framework does not expect much previous programming or Perl experience, though knowing a few foundational elements may go a long way.
While we provide a Just enough Perl for Rex page on our website, I often find myself sharing my own experience about getting started with Perl.
I decided to write my own take about the basics from a Rex perspective, and collect further resources I keep recommending or referring to.
Let’s see what I considered useful when I started out.
We briefly describe the different ways to install Rex, the friendly automation framework on the Get Rex page of our website, as well as in the Installation section of our README:
Depending on the situation at hand, one of these often fit better than the rest.
Let’s go through the available options in more detail to help choosing the best match.
We follow a set of guiding principles while developing Rex, the friendly automation framework:
While we summarize these concepts briefly on our website, I consider it worthwhile to elaborate on the underlying details.
Let’s take a closer look at why we find these choices important.
Automation challenges often focus on remote endpoints, while several use cases require automating locally as well. Typical situations range from managing a personal machine, through setups where the managed fleet includes the host managing the whole, to pull-style models where each node manages itself.
Rex, the friendly automation framework supports any combination of local and remote execution. This post summarizes the main orientation points about local management.
Rex provides several options for local management to choose from, allowing authors to express their intent explicitly according to their use case at hand: