From: Matt Lawrence <matt@...>
Date: 2010-10-26T05:30:59+09:00
Subject: Re: DSL and indirection question

On Tue, 26 Oct 2010, James Edward Gray II wrote:

> On Oct 25, 2010, at 2:20 PM, Matt Lawrence wrote:
>
>> I'm trying to figure out the best way of writing a script that 
>> describes various requirements in the form of "12.34.56" (from a 
>> requirement document) that I can then create methods for reporting, 
>> verifying and remediating the requirment on a system.
>>
>> This is script for checking and fixing systems based on a bunch of 
>> security requirements.  There are a couple of hundred rules and a few 
>> hundred systems.  I am thinking about building a hash of Procs, but I 
>> think it is going to be too ugly.  Any suggestions on a clean and easy 
>> to read way of doing this?
>
> This almost sounds like a job for Chef or Puppet, if I understood 
> correctly.

Chef or Puppet would not be practical in this environment for various 
reasons.  This place is not in the Stone Age like my last job, they're 
more like the Bronze Age.  I am campaigning to at least get Cfengine set 
up.

> I'm not really getting what you are aiming for here.  Can you show a 
> simple example or two?

I have a directory full of results from a security scan, on file per 
system.  In that file each line starts with a rule number, like "12.34" 
and has a pass/fail/skipped result.

What I probably want to do is to create a class for rules with each rule 
having methods for testing and fixing each issue found.  I know I can 
brute force the script and it will look ugly or I can ask for help on 
doing a nifty DSL in the new favoured Ruby style.

-- Matt
It's not what I know that counts.
It's what I can remember in time to use.