After 18 months of working on Ocuroot, I think it's time to move on. It's been a heck of a ride and quite the learning experience!
When working with IaC platforms, there's usually some infra you need to configure to get them working. With Terraform, you need somewhere to keep your state, for example. How do you configure this infra? Are you stuck doing it manually, or could you automate it?
Over the years, I got into a narrow routine when using Git for day-to-day development. Now I'm building tools around Git, I'm discovering all kinds of features I'd never noticed before. Here are my favorite three.
It might be tempting to put all your infrastructure into a single Terraform module for simplicity. But as you scale, this approach will start slowing you down. Here's what can do wrong and how you can address it.
CI/CD pipelines are code too. In this post we'll explore some testing strategies so you're not always left waiting for feedback. We'll also look at what Ocuroot is doing to make it even easier!
With Ocuroot's new cascade mode, you can roll out a complex environment with a single command!
The v0.3.14 release of Ocuroot has finally finished baking. I'd love you to give it a try and share your thoughts.
Over the past few weeks, I've been rebuilding the Ocuroot landing site in Go, matching the UI for the tool itself. Let's look into the why and the how.
Why retries are important and some first steps in building them into Ocuroot
Augmenting command-line state manipulation with a web UI for more intuitive navigation.
How I built a lightweight mock CI server to test GitHub Actions workflows locally, speeding up development and debugging cycles.
Sometimes the simplest tools are the most effective. Here's why I chose bash scripts when writing end-to-end tests for Ocuroot.
How I'm using Ocuroot to automate semantic versioning for binaries, implementing a pre-release workflow to avoid runaway version numbers.
Introducing the all-new refs model in Ocuroot SDK v0.3, enabling flexible pipeline connections based on any attribute.
An update on how Ocuroot SDK v0.3 will handle dependencies, enabling seamless asset sharing and cross-deployment references.
A deeper look at the latest refinements to Ocuroot SDK v0.3: ordered phases, direct work specification, and flexible artifact creation.
At some point, many organizations will need to expand beyond a single production environment. Let's look at how you might arrive at this fork in the road!
A sneak peek at v0.3 of the Ocuroot SDK, featuring deterministic release ordering, state-machine deployment chaining, and non-blocking delays—with canary deployments as a primary example.
How imperative code in CI/CD configurations can unlock powerful workflows that declarative YAML simply can't handle.
How a good local testing workflow can accelerate your development cycle, approaches you can take today and how Ocuroot can help in the future.
A common request from some early users of Ocuroot has been the ability to visualize a CI/CD pipeline. With an imperative configuration language, this can be challenging to do ahead of time, so I've made some tweaks to the SDK!
CI/CD pipelines come in all shapes and sizes, but you can describe almost every step using four key concepts.
How you can use Ocuroot to enhance your existing CI platform
In June of this year, I quit my job to start Ocuroot. It's a huge change, and people have asked my why I decided to take this leap. I've asked myself that far more often. But there's a simple answer.