Designing a package manager from the ground up

Re:Designing a package manager from the ground up by sirn on Sunday March 03, 2019 @10:24PM (#19298546)

Orb is actually a Docker image (executor) plus few defined commands. Say, if you want to build a custom Slack notification for multiple projects, you'd create an Orb with an executor and a command, e.g.

    executors:
      alpine:
        docker:
          - image: alpine:3.6
    
    parameters:
      webhook_url:
        description: URL to Slack webhook
        type: string
      message:
        description: Message to post to Slack
        type: string
    
    commands:
      notify:
        description: "Notify Slack"
        executor: alpine
        steps:
          - run:
              name: Notify Slack
              command: |
                curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' --data "{ \
                  \"attachments\": [ \
                    { \
                      \"fallback\": \"<<parameters.message>>\", \
                      \"text\": \"<<parameters.message>>\", \
                      \"mrkdwn\": true, \
                      \"color\": \"#1cbf43\", \
                    } \
                  ] \
                }" <<parameters.webhook_url>>

So if I publish this Orb as say sirn/slack@dev, anyone can use this Orb in their build pipeline with:

    orbs:
      slack_notify: sirn/slack@dev

    workflow:
      foo:
        jobs:
          - slack/notify:
              webhook_url: "..."
              message: "..."

I've been using Orb for the past month and I see Orb as a more of a way to share common steps definition (à la Ansible Galaxy) than something of Apt/Brew/NixPkg caliber. It's convenient in CircleCI's context, and easier to get started than trying to build a shared Jenkins Pipeline Scripts, but it's still weird that we're programming in YAML leveraging shell scripts instead of going directly to shell script (which is part of why I love builds.sr.ht).

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Re:Designing a package manager from the ground up by peterwwillis on Monday March 04, 2019 @12:03PM (#19302759)

Man, that's terrible. How the hell are you supposed to syntax check that, or version control it, or collaborate on it? Extract it from yaml, do a thing, test it, then put it back in yaml, then run it and test it again? And if anyone else wants to make a change to your change, they now have to do the same? What a pain in the ass.

If this is all Docker containers anyway, why aren't they just creating Docker images and referencing them? They're just shoving a Dockerfile into YAML, without the benefit of it actually being a Dockerfile.

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