Article on zero to CI/CD in an evening

[cdriehuys]

Went from empty folder to CI/CD of an application in an evening. Emphasize the importance of "getting it done" rather than "getting it perfect". "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good". Highlights:

• Took 3 hours; specific time is not important, but relative to other side projects, this is a huge improvement
  • Commitment to "getting it deployed" and not necessarily doing it perfect
  • Note that this is all tech I've used before
  • Maybe with the exception of deploying from GitHub Actions
• Setting up deployment from the start is an easier obstacle to overcome than deploying a more complex application
  • Initial setup means just exposing a webserver
  • Deploying later means setting up a webserver and a database and any other requirements all at once
  • Easier to build on something that works (eg add database to existing deployment)
• Instances of doing something that just worked
  • Manually create DO droplet
  • Ideally everything is infrastructure as code, but starting there often means getting bogged down in problems tangential to your application
  • Secrets stored in GitHub Secrets (not in git) as opposed to something like Ansible Vault (or overkill like Hashicorp's Vault)
  • "But what if they need automated rotation". no.
  • "But script everything". no
• Hacker News comment on why software is prone to over-engineering
  • We don't want to look like fools because we didn't anticipate some future need
  • Real solution is to keep things as simple and readable as possible for the current needs which facilitates future refactoring.
  • Don't refactor now for the potential needs of the future

[cdriehuys]

Didn't get around to this, and now I don't remember it 🤷