Episodes / Tool Tips — Comments Off
07
Dec 12

Languages Du Jour

To get into the holiday spirit, the Crew looks at the various programming languages used in the release engineering and DevOps space: is there a language that “binds it all together?” If so, what language holds that title, and why? Is that language shifting? And if so, what’s the driving force behind the shift? Join us as we look over the menu of:

RelEng & DevOps Languages du Jour

Join J. Paul Reed, aka @SoberBuildEng, Youssuf El-Kalay, aka @buildscientist, Seth Thomas, aka @cheeseplus, and EJ Ciramella, aka @eciramella for the discussion, plus the last couple of weeks in News & Views and a new Tooltip!

Or, download Episode 11, or any of our previous shows!

Show Links/Notes

Tool Tips

Paul discusses the Fuse plugin SSHFS, why it’s super-useful and when not to use it.

Join Us!

What’s your language du jour? How often do you have to learn a new language? And what makes you have to do that?

Join the discussion!

devopsdearabby / Episodes — Comments Off
14
Nov 12

When Your CI Tool Starts Looking Like a Sledgehammer

In episode ten, we discuss build infrastructure architecture: what are some of the differences between continuous integration tools and orchestration tools, and what’s the criteria for establishing the delineations between the two? We touch on ways to mesh the two together in a sustainable way, as we explore what to do:

When Your CI Tool Starts Looking Like a Sledgehammer

Join J. Paul Reed, aka @SoberBuildEng, Youssuf El-Kalay, aka @buildscientist, Sascha Bates, aka @sascha_d and Seth Thomas, aka @cheeseplus for the discussion, plus the last couple of weeks in News & Views and another of round of #DevOpsDearAbby!

Or, download Episode 10, or any of our previous shows!

Show Links/Notes

Dear Abby for DevOps

@julian_dunn asks “Who do you think should be responsible for the build/release toolchain?“

@alirayl asks “Regarding @jezhumble‘s “There is no such thing as a DevOps team,” is there such a thing as a DevOps consultant?”

Join Us!

What’s the weirdest contortion of a CI or orchestration tool you’ve seen? And where do you think the lines between those tools are?

Join the discussion!

Episodes / Interviews / Tool Tips — Comments Off
30
Oct 12

Challenges Faced by the Enterprise Git Architect

In our last single-digit episode, we sit down with Perforce’s Director of Product Technology, James Creasy, to discuss the issues faced by enterprises attempting to deploy git and the general challenges of using git in environments where its trackrecord isn’t as established. Join us for our discussion on:

Challenges Faced by the Enterprise Git Architect

Join J. Paul Reed, aka @SoberBuildEng, Youssuf El-Kalay, aka @buildscientist, Sascha Bates, aka @sascha_d and Seth Thomas, aka @cheeseplus for the discussion, plus the last couple of weeks in News & Views and an introduction to a screen-replacement in Tool Tips!

Or, download Episode 9, or any of our previous shows!

Show Links/Notes

Episodes / Reviews — Comments Off
18
Oct 12

Rolling Your Own

Episode 8 brings crisp fall weather (“summer” in San Francisco), and a discussion on rolling your own: your own tool, your own Jenkins or Maven plugin, your own whatever. We take a closer look at some of the costs associated with doing so and some of the aspects to think about when trying to decide whether to hack on (and join) the open source community around a particular tool, or buck up and write it yourself. When exactly is the best decision:

Rolling Your Own

Join J. Paul Reed, aka @SoberBuildEng, EJ Ciramella, aka @eciramella, Youssuf El-Kalay, aka @buildscientist, and Sascha Bates, aka @sascha_d for the discussion, plus the last couple of weeks in News & Views and a review of the recent Jenkins User Conference.

Or, download Episode 8, or any of our previous shows!

Show Links/Notes

Review

EJ tells us all about his experience at the recent Jenkins User Conference in San Francisco, including a coverage of the most important aspect of the conference: the food!


Join Us!

Has “rolling your own” sometimes been a nightmare, sometimes a nightmare? Never a nightmare? Are there “happy ever after” roll-your-own stories?

Join the discussion!

The Comment Block — Comments Off
02
Oct 12

Bootstrapping Your Developer Environments

For Episode 7, we examine the issue of bootstrapping developer work environments. Can the configuration management and automation tools we all know and love be used to get setup developer workstations and get your new-hires writing, building, and shipping code more quickly? And is that even something DevOps and release engineers should be responsible for? Join as we examine strategies for:

Bootstrapping Your Developer Environments

Join J. Paul Reed, aka @SoberBuildEng, EJ Ciramella, aka @eciramella, Youssuf El-Kalay, aka @buildscientist, Seth Thomas, aka @cheeseplus, and Sascha Bates, aka @sascha_d for techniques on improving initial developer productivity, plus coverage of the last couple of weeks in News & Views and a new segment: The Comment Block.

Or, download Episode 7, or any of our previous shows!

Show Links/Notes

Review

Paul waxes philosophic on Sascha’s Learning to Let Go (or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb), and argues that in the end: we’re all practicing therapists.


Join Us!

How do you deploy environments to your developers? What tricks do you use to make it faster, repeatable, and your teams more productive?

Join the discussion!

Episodes / Interviews / Reviews — Comments Off
18
Sep 12

A Conversation with Mark Burgess

Episode 6 represents a milestone for The Ship Show: our first guest!

When it comes to configuration management frameworks, CFEngine is always part of the conversation. We talk with the father of the configuration management tool and the CTO of CFEngine Mark Burgess and CMO of CFEngine, Mark de Visser about CM, CM tools, where CM intersects business needs, and the trends affecting CM today. Join us for:

A Conversation with CFEngine’s Mark Burgess

Join J. Paul Reed, aka @SoberBuildEng, Youssuf El-Kalay, aka @buildscientist, Sascha Bates, aka @sascha_d, and back with us again, EJ Ciramella, aka @eciramella for a chat with Mark, plus coverage of the last couple of weeks in News & Views and a review of “The Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering.”

Or, download Episode 6, or any of our previous shows!

Show Links/Notes

  • 1:38 – News & Views
  • 9:29 – Main Segment: A Conversation with Mark Burgess
    • 9:55 – What Mark has been up to…
    • 13:55 – Promise theory?
    • 18:08 – Specifyingconfiguration in domain-specific languages vs. the implementation language
    • 21:29 – Operating system and CM?
    • 22:24 – Thoughts on other CM frameworks
    • 23:30 – CFEngine and open source
    • 25:39 – CFEngine’s unique open source community
    • 28:53 – CFEngine User groups
    • 29:23 – Mark’s take on DevOps
    • 32:14 – The shifting focus toward developers and its impact on CM
    • 40:04 – The impact of cloud on CM
    • 43:54 – Exotic CFEngine deployments
    • 48:10 – Why is CM still so hard, even with all the tools we have?
    • 52:35 – How to not “live in fear” of your systems
    • 54:00 – Mark’s response to Michael de Haan’s criticisms of complexity
    • 58:00 – We go all Inside the Actor’s Studio with Mark, as he takes The Ship Show’s version of the Proust Questionnaire
  • 1:00:45 – Review

Review

Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert L. Glass.

Find it on Amazon!


Join Us!

Where do you think configuration management is going? And what role does CFEngine play?

Join the discussion!

devopsdearabby / Episodes — Comments Off
05
Sep 12

Too Much… Automation?

Our topic for episode 5 attempts to answer a question that seems like it should have an obvious one: is there such a thing as too much automation. Many would say “Of course not,” but is it that simple? Is blindly automating everything in sight the best use of time and resources and, more importantly, the best way to manage risk in the release process? Join the conversation as we try to answer:

Is There Such a Thing as “Too Much Automation?”

Join J. Paul Reed, aka @SoberBuildEng, Youssuf El-Kalay, aka @buildscientist, and Seth Thomas, aka @cheeseplus, and our newest co-host, Sascha Bates, aka @sascha_d, as we discuss the above, plus review the last couple of weeks in News & Views and answer listener questions in our new “DevOps Dear Abby” segment.

Or, download Episode 5, or any of our previous shows!

Show Links/Notes

"Dear Abby for DevOps"

@cwebber asks "Why is it so hard to get people to talk about the culture aspect of #DevOps instead of the tools?"

@drakino asks "What are good questions to ask during an interview towards a potential employer. to gauge their current devops health?"

Join Us!

Is automation always the way to go? What "automation horror stories" do you have?

Join the discussion!

Episodes / Tool Tips — Comments Off
21
Aug 12

Stop the Presses!

In episode 4, we discuss what to do when “mistakes may have been made,” and it’s time to be solution-oriented! Whether it’s a deployment that replaced good code with bad, an infrastructure problem discovered after a maintenance window, or even a bug in the deployment process itself, join us as we look at:

Stop the Presses: The Ins & Outs of Rollbacks

Join J. Paul Reed, aka @SoberBuildEng, Youssuf El-Kalay, aka @buildscientist, and Seth Thomas, aka @cheeseplus, as we discuss the above, plus review the last couple of weeks in News & Views and look at yet more tools to help you ship in Tool Tips.

Or, download Episode 4, or any of our previous shows!

Show Links/Notes

Tool Tips

Vagrant

Vagrant is a tool focused on leveraging virtualization to make bringing up, configuring, managing, and tearing down environments for local developer usage and testing as simple as one command. As their front page says, they want to make “well, it works on my machine!” a relic of the past, something we whole-heartedly support here at The Ship Show!

As Seth says “If you’re not using Vagrant right now, the first thing you should go out and do is go to vagrantup.com.”

Join Us!

Join the discussion!

Have you ever had to stop the presses, or roll them back?

Share your stories with us:

Uncategorized — Comments Off
10
Aug 12

Now With 1000% More Subscribability

As we mentioned in our last episode, one of the most commonly asked questions we’ve gotten is “How can I subscribe to your newsletter podcast?” We’ve definitely heard you and getting that set up has been at the top of our list!

We’re happy to announce that we finally have the various feeds up and ready to go!

  • If you’re just interested in the podcasts, you can subscribe to the podcast feed; this feed just contains the podcast and associated metadata, no other content. This feed works great for subscribing via iTunes, via Advanced -> Subscribe to Podcast and then enter the feed URL: /podcast.xml.
  • To subscribe to the content on the blog, which contains show links and notes, plus media links to the MP3s of the podcast, you can subscribe to the full the full feed. This feed may contain announcements, like this one; if you’re only interested in episodes, a full feed containing only episodes is available as well.
  • If you’re looking to subscribe via the iTunes Music Store, the feed is making its way through Apple’s review process; we’ll announce when it’s available, but in the meantime, you can subscribe via iTunes directly using the method above. That was quick! You can now find us in iTunes music store and subscribe via that method as well!

The interest, excitement, and support for a podcast dealing solely with issues facing build, release, and devops engineers has been tremendous, and we’re excited about upcoming episodes.

We hope you are too, and we hope the site changes we’ve made make it more discoverable and easier to join us every couple of weeks!

As always, if you have any feedback for the Crew, you know where to find us!

Episodes / Tool Tips — Comments Off
07
Aug 12

Hire the Best

In episode 3, we take a look at the process around hiring DevOps and release engineers, including reviewing resumes, interview structure, questions to ask, and red and yellow flags. The tech job market has been hot for a few months now, and the hiring of engineers in support roles—QA, IT, and (yes!) release engineering/DevOps—is starting to feel the heat; join us as we try to figure out:

How To Hire the Absolute Best Release & DevOps Engineers

Join J. Paul Reed, aka @SoberBuildEng, Youssuf El-Kalay, aka @buildscientist, and Seth Thomas, aka @cheeseplus, as we discuss the above, plus review the last couple of weeks in News & Views and look at new tools to help you ship in Tool Tips.

Or, download Episode 3, or any of our previous shows!

Show Links/Notes

Tool Tips

Ack!
An open-source grep replacement targeted towards software development and searching source trees for information in specific file types, while ignoring editor backups, core dumps, and binaries; offers full Perl-regular expression syntax for searching.

Grab ack at betterthangrep.com (and be sure to check out the --thpppt option!)

Join Us!

Join the discussion!

We’d love to hear your own “red flag” hiring/interview stories!

Share them with us at:

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