If software is eating the world, automation is keeping it from falling to piece. Automation shouldn't stop with servers. Boxen helps your organization eliminate the routinely manual task of hand-configuring an artisanal development machine. It's a complex problem, and that means sometimes parts of the solution are complex too. In this talk, we explore actually using Boxen to automate your organization's IT needs in a way that doesn't step on your developers' toes. Will Farrington Junior Executive Assistant to the Assistant VP of Operations, GitHub, Inc. Will is a developer and operations engineer. Will works on system operations at GitHub, where he spends most of his time slinging Puppet to manage GitHub's extensive production environment where he spends a great deal of time on automating, homogenizing, and improving GitHub's development environments. Prior to GitHub, he spent the previous 3 years using Ruby and Puppet to build and scale massive web services with Highgroove Studios and Rails Machine.

1. BOXEN

2. WFARR

3. JBARNETTE

4. !
"

5. INVENTING ON PRINCIPLE

6. WHAT IN THE HELL IS MY PRINCIPLE?

7. SOFTWARE IS TERRIBLE

8. DEVELOPING SOFTWARE IS HARD

9. INTERACTING WITH SOFTWARE IS PAINFUL

10. PAINFUL SOFTWARE CREATES FRICTION

11. FRICTION GETS BETWEEN PEOPLE AND PRODUCT

12. SOFTWARE SHOULD FEEL EASY TO EVERYONE

13. SOFTWARE SHOULD GET OUT OF THE WAY

14. “Help people design, build, and ship
software better, together.”
"

15. “Help people more easily design, build,
and ship things, with software.”

17. WE'RE GOING TO NEED MORE PORCELAIN
TO ENABLE PEOPLE TO SHIP

18. SHIPPING ISN'T JUST FOR SOFTWARE, YO

19. EVERYONE IN YOUR ORGANIZATION SHIPS;
HOW DOES YOUR CULTURE ENCOURAGE THAT?

20. ENABLE #

21. HOW?

22. WE NEED A MISSION STATEMENT

23. TATFT

24. T E S T
A L L
T H E
F & % $ I N G
T I M E

25. “Whatever you do, make sure you are testing, because if you aren’t, all
you are doing is making it harder for yourself when you revisit the code,
and making it even harder for the next developer who will inevitably
have to maintain what you just wrote.”
- Bryan Liles

26. $

27. “Whatever you do, make sure you are automating, because if you aren’t,
all you are doing is making it harder for yourself when you revisit the
problem, and making it even harder for the next person who will
inevitably have to reproduce your solution.”

28. “Whatever you do, make sure you are automating, because if you aren’t,
all you are doing is making it harder for yourself when you revisit the
problem, and making it even harder for the next person who will
inevitably have to reproduce your solution.”

29. AUTOMATE PROBLEM REPRODUCE SOLUTION

30. AUTOMATING SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS LEADS TO
REPRODUCIBLE SOLUTIONS

31. AUTOMATING SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS LEADS TO
REPRODUCIBLE SOLUTIONS WHICH ARE EASIER THAN
SOLVING PROBLEMS UNIQUELY EACH TIME

32. AUTOMATING SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS LEADS TO
REPRODUCIBLE SOLUTIONS WHICH ARE EASIER THAN
SOLVING PROBLEMS UNIQUELY EACH TIME FOR EVERYONE

33. A U T O M A T E
A L L
T H E
F & % $ I N G
T H I N G S

34. # WORK IN ENVIRONMENTS

35. % &

36. ' (

37. )

38. *

39. class github::environment {
include clojure
include go
include mysql
include nodejs
include postgresql
include ruby
$gems = [ 'bundler', 'rails' ]
ruby::gem { $gems: }
}

40. class github::environment::rails {
include mysql
include nodejs # asset pipeline :(
include ruby
$gems = [
'bundler',
'rails'
]
ruby::gem { $gems: }
}

41. class github::environment::webscale {
include mongodb
include nodejs
include redis
}

42. class github::environment::hipsterstack {
include funding::series_a
# FIXME: include business_model
}

43. class github::environment::design {
include photoshop
# ???
}

44. class github::environment::legal {
include microsoft_word
# ???
}

45. class github::environment::hr {
include hugs
# ???
}

46. WE KNOW A THING OR TWO ABOUT
DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS

47. BUT WE ARE COMPLETELY CLUELESS WHEN
IT COMES TO EMPOWERING PEOPLE
OUTSIDE DEVELOPER-SPACE

48. WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND DIFFERENT KINDS
OF ENVIRONMENTS AND THEN MAKE THEM
BETTER WITH AUTOMATION

49. TELLING THEM THEY HAVE TO USE
OUR TOOLING TO AUTOMATE AWAY
PAIN IS A COP-OUT

50. # WORK ON PROJECTS

51. + github/github

52. class projects::github {
github::project { 'github':
mysql => true,
redis => true,
ruby => '2.1',
}
}

53. $ boxen github

54. <LOTS OF TECHNOLOGY HAPPENING HERE>

55. AND NOW JILL DEVELOPER CAN WORK ON GITHUB

56. BUT WHAT ABOUT THOSE FOLKS IN FINANCE?

57. class projects::quarterly_taxes {
# ???
}

58. class projects::financial_audit {
# ???
}

59. # NEED DIFFERENT THINGS

60. # DESERVE TO BE HAPPY

61. # REALLY LIKE ,

62. OS X 10.9 "MAVERICKS" SUPPORT

63. NO MANUAL XCODE INSTALL REQUIRED

65. HIERA EVERYWHERE

66. UPDATING MODULES TO GET A NEW VERSION OF X SUCKS

67. TRYING TO RUN A SERVICE ON A DIFFERENT PORT SUCKS

68. HIERA FIXES THESE THINGS WITHOUT UGLY HACKS

69. HIERA FIXES THESE THINGS WITHOUT FORKING MODULES

70. YAML CHANGES ARE MORE APPROACHABLE THAN PUPPET

71. HINTS OF LINUX SUPPORT

72. REALLY SUBTLE HINTS

73. # grep boxen github/puppet/Puppetfile
mod "nodejs", "3.2.5", :github_tarball => "boxen/puppet-nodejs"
mod "phantomjs", "2.0.1", :github_tarball => "boxen/puppet-phantomjs"
mod "repository", "2.2.0", :github_tarball => "boxen/puppet-repository"

74. MORE CORE MODULES WILL GET SUPPORT OVER TIME

75. PUPPETMASTER SUPPORT

76. I ACTUALLY WASN'T INVOLVED IN THIS

77. SOMEONE TOLD ME THEY HAD DONE IT YESTERDAY

78. GOOD ON YA

79. I NEED TO BUY YOU A BEER

80. MENUBAR APP

81. LAST YEAR I HAD A TERRIBLE PROOF-OF-CONCEPT

82. THIS YEAR I HAVE THE SAME PROOF-OF-CONCEPT

83. BUT GOOD NEWS

84. MY ROOMMATE IS A GITHUB FOR MAC DEVELOPER

85. THIS THING IS FINALLY GOING TO HAPPEN

86. HENSON

87. LIBRARIAN-PUPPET "WORKS"

88. LIBRARIAN-PUPPET "WORKS"-ISH

89. YOUR SOFTWARE IS BAD
AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD

90. HENSON IS NOT A DEAD PROJECT

91. SOME OTHER PRIORITIES NEEDED OUR ATTENTION FIRST

92. CLOSING THOUGHTS

93. BOXEN IS NOT PERFECT

94. IT'S SOFTWARE

95. IT HAS MADE OUR LIVES A LOT EASIER AT GITHUB

96. IT MIGHT MAKE YOUR LIFE EASIER

97. DON'T USE IT BECAUSE THERE'S A BIG NAME ATTACHED

98. F&%$ THIS GUY

99. DO IT FOR YOU

100. HEeeeLLO
BEAUTIFUL

101. THANKS