aelsabbahy

Some high level differences from serverspec/testinfra:

* Goss is self contained binary, no python/ruby needed

* Goss is YAML, not python/ruby DSL

* Goss can generate tests from system state using add/autoadd

* Goss can expose tests as a http health endpoint

* Goss can sleep/retry until a system is in a good state, this is useful in docker. See blog

* It runs extremely fast benchmark showing 1,000 tests running under 100ms

Some limitations:

* Goss has to run on the system locally, self-contained binary makes it simple to install.

* DSL will always have more flexibility in what you can do, but it's much simpler. So depends on what you're looking for.

I posted goss to show HN a year ago, but a lot has changed since.

Changes since my initial post:

* Goss is now primarily YAML based (was JSON originally)

* Goss supports golang's text/template to allow tests to be dynamic https://github.com/aelsabbahy/goss/blob/master/docs/manual.m...

* Goss can expose test results as a /healthz endpoint

* Goss can sleep/retry until system is in a passing state, useful for docker waits, see: (https://medium.com/@aelsabbahy/docker-1-12-kubernetes-simpli...)

* Many enhancements and bug fixes

I've also posted a tutorial video for the tool here: https://youtu.be/in1ItGKDr98

"We had a slight issue with a routine software upgrade" - love the wording on that. Sounds like something I would tell my boss after accidentally taking prod down.

Makes sense, any examples of good/simple sites that come to mind?

Does it though? I feel I usually prefer to go to a github page of a project and will only resort to their website if the documentation only lives there. Maybe I'm in the minority :(

So right now I have a simple 302 redirect from a domain I own. I guess my question is more about the benefits of having a "site with more detailed information" vs readme + docs in markdown format in the repo itself?

I've also posted a tutorial video for the tool here: https://youtu.be/in1ItGKDr98

I like to think to myself "If I had to verify this server manually what would I check?" and write automated tests for those. Usually, it's a few high level/important checks for critical services, ports, packages, and users. For configuration files I check for one setting and if it's there assume the rest are correct. Ultimately, it's mostly going by gut and balancing level of effort in maintaining a test vs increased level of confidence in the deployment from having said test.

Some tools out there:

* https://github.com/aelsabbahy/goss - YAML, simple, self-contained binary, extremely fast.

* https://github.com/indusbox/goss-ansible - Ansible module for goss, never used this, but you might find it useful

* http://serverspec.org/ - Ruby, most popular infra testing tool

* https://github.com/chef/inspec - Ruby, looks like an improved serverspec, almost same syntax, made by the chef guys

* https://github.com/philpep/testinfra - Python, don't know much about it, but mentioning it since Ansible is Python.

Spend a little bit of time experimenting with all of them, see which one you like.

Full disclosure: I'm the author of goss.

This blog post explains the difference between goss and serverspec better than I did:

http://www.unixdaemon.net/tools/testing-with-goss.html

The concept of resource/system_resource was borrowed from projects like puppet, chef. ansible, specinfra, etc.

There's probably an opportunity to make this more generic by adding setter methods to the system_resources and extracting them out to their own repo. At that point it can be a shared library leveraged by goss and CM tools.. similar to how specinfra is used by serverspec and itamae.

This is my first go program, wanted to learn the language. Any feedback on code and/or tool would be greatly appreciated.

The tool is intended to be a simple take on server validation. The idea is to be able to quickly define a system manifest and validate a system against it.

Differences from serverspec:

* 10-30x faster depending on test suite (tests are run in parallel)

* Can derive server state and generate a manifest from a running server

* goss is meant to be simple, albeit less flexible

* Uses JSON instead of DSL

* Manifests are static - no variables, conditionals, etc. If you need this, you should dynamically generate the JSON manifest.

* Being in Go, it's a self contained binary, no need for ruby

* Supports a much smaller set of OSes/test types

For more complicated workflows, the tool can be chained with other commands, ex:

curl http://url/to/static/or/dynamic/goss.json | goss validate