JetPorch Automation Tech Preview One Release

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September 27, 2023

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Introduction

Jet is a versatile and community-driven IT automation platform designed for various tasks such as configuration, deployment, orchestration, patch management, and executing diverse workflows. Led by Michael DeHaan, the original creator of widely-used IT automation tools like Cobbler and Ansible, Jet combines simplicity, consistency, and stability in its design.

Tech Preview Release: Jet is gearing up for its first Tech Preview release, scheduled for September 29th, 2023. To celebrate this milestone, a virtual text-only release party will be held on Discord starting at 11:30 AM EST and continuing throughout the day and night.

Key Features of Jet:

Language Simplicity: Jet emphasizes straightforward and consistent language usage for an easy-to-understand syntax.
Multithreaded Performance: Powered by Rust, Jet delivers blazing-fast multithreaded performance.
Security and Audit Focus: Jet prioritizes enterprise-grade security for efficient and secure IT operations.
Documentation: Jet offers user-friendly documentation to help users maximize its capabilities.
Extensibility: While Jet’s core modules are in Rust, users can create modules in languages supporting JSON.
Core Language and Compatibility: Jet’s core language and compatibility are designed to cater to IT professionals familiar with Ansible. It utilizes a YAML dialect similar to Ansible’s playbook language, ensuring a smooth transition for Ansible users. Additionally, Jet employs Handlebars as its template engine, maintaining familiarity with templating tasks. Variable handling is streamlined to provide more predictability and consistency.
Stability: Jet is committed to language stability to minimize disruptions during upgrades. The language documentation is treated as a specification, and careful design decisions are made to avoid breaking changes to existing user automation content. As Jet prepares for its inaugural release, it promises to be a powerful and user-friendly solution for IT automation, setting new standards in efficiency and reliability. Join the Jet community and stay tuned for an exciting journey into the future of IT automation.

Tech Release One

GitHub will publish the code release on Friday, 29th September, at 11:30 AM Eastern Standard Time as part of the Discord Release Party. Michael DeHaan (aka LaserLama) will be available on Discord all day until at least 9 PM Eastern (and probably way later) to accommodate people worldwide. So, yes, it’s a text-only release party in Discord all day! If you are not yet on Discord, see details on the documentation website.

Getting Started with Jet

Jet is a very community-driven project. The official communication channels are the website, Discord chat, and Substack. The documentation website is very upfront. If you have any questions about learning Jet as you read the docs, ask them in conversation, and the volunteer can help.

The project is inclusive of everyone worldwide and working in various time zones. Since they are using asynchronous-capable chat, it is possible to ask questions anytime. This is meant to be an international project, and we won’t let a concept as small as time get in the way.

Exploring Jet

Start your Jet journey by writing basic playbooks that use services, packages, and files. The syntax closely resembles the Ansible Playbook YAML language. Experiment locally, try SSH, and explore inventory plugins for cloud environments. Jet’s impressive features include fast Rust threading for parallel SSH and seamless handling of massive inventories. The best thing to do is start small and write some basic playbooks that use services, packages, and files and see what you think of Jet. The code syntax closely resembles the Ansible Playbook YAML language. Some suggestions:

Try some code easily locally and then try SSH.
Try an inventory plugin for your cloud. If you have a small test lab, get a feel for the performance of Jet multithreading and let me know what you think.
There are some very nice features already on top of all the language clarity efforts — extremely fast rust threading for parallel SSH is near the very top of those. The ability to work with massive inventories without skipping a beat is another. (Thanks, Rust, I did very little work for that!).
Don’t try to configure anything serious if you don’t want to. Just run /usr/bin/true with the shell module; it doesn’t matter. If you have a cloud and wouldn’t mind firing some commands at your dev or stage environment, that works, too!
Get a feel for the CLI and share your thoughts. If you want to ask Rust questions, that’s great as well! If you want to ask about things you are not sure if they are there or not, that’s great! If you want to suggest feature ideas on chat, that’s good too! Anything goes as long as it’s festive.

Most commonly, only the remote username needs to be changed “devops”, and this can be adjusted on the command line:

jetp - playbook playbook.yml - inventory inventory - user devops

playbook.yml

# playbook.yml
- name: Hello world
  groups:
     - groupA
  tasks:
      - !shell: 
       cmd: echo hi

Legal/Notes

Ansible® is a registered trademark of Red Hat and is a GPLv3-licensed open-source application. Jetporch is not a drop-in replacement for any system and is an unaffiliated community project that will also have a GPLv3 license. Jetporch does not come with a warranty, expressed or implied. Usage is at your own risk.

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What to Expect in the Future

All the Tech Preview One features are sprinkled throughout the docs and mostly summarized on this status page.

The team will use the time in the coming month or so to not only improve modules and such from people trying out this first release but also continue to add modules and features as indicated on the status page and work with anybody who wants to contribute to the project to add who knows what may come.

Of planned features for Tech Preview 2, the SSH Fanout features and the ability to write modules in any language (JSON external modules) will be extremely impactful. The team will follow that with a third release in December or early January, featuring our planetary-scale deployment feature.

Contributions

Contribution can also start immediately on Friday, though I would remind people to read the contribution guide on the docs site rather than submitting a GitHub pull request right away. We want things to be conversational and work through ideas before working through code.

Part of this is about reducing duplicate efforts and avoiding having to ask folks to make changes after they have already put in a lot of hard work. The team is empathetic to that based on past experiences — and they want to get stuff into a state where we can merge quickly and not leave folks out in limbo with all the hard work they have done to help the project.

Conclusion

JetPorch is poised to significantly impact the world of IT automation, driven by a community that values simplicity, performance, and security. With its Tech Preview One release just around the corner on September 29th, 2023, Jet promises to deliver efficient and secure automation solutions while offering an inclusive and collaborative environment for users worldwide. As we anticipate the release and explore the possibilities of Jet, we look forward to a future where IT operations are streamlined, reliable, and adaptable to the ever-evolving tech landscape. Join the celebration, get involved, and join the exciting journey into the future of IT automation with Jet.

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