A few months ago I set out to make a DevOps starter kit that would be open-source and allow others to download it and get started on their software building and deployment jounrney. In that time I’ve come to realize that the number of ways to deploy software, the varied stacks, the different languages and CI tooling for each one ensures that building a DevOps starter kit to cover even the 3 primary clouds and languages is so large that maintenance will become a headache on it.
Options Are Good Until They Are Not
When you are building software you want options for how you can build it that both allow you to build what you need to and also do it in a way that is good for speed and developer productivity. Therefore having options can be a both a blessing and a curse. When you have 3-5 options for how to build something you can normally find something that is general enough to be made into what you need but also specific enough to make it fast to build what you need.
However when you get beyond 5 options on building software it becomes harder to decide on an option. In the case of building a DevOps starter kit, the options others have to choose from are your required to be supported ones. When there is 2 things to decide on and 3 options each you have 9 options total. Now when there is 10 things to decide on and 10 options each you have 1024 options to support. See where this becomes a horrible thing when building a starter kit?
Conclusion
In the end I decided to end the project as it was not possible to build a starter kit that covered everything that would be reasonably needed by most new software companies. Building a DevOps stack is far too bespoke to be built into a starter kit unless that starter kit is your starting point. Normaly your starting point is a SaaS starter kit if you are using a starter kit at all.
To support at least a part of my primary goal I am am going to release my own DevOps starter kit I use for my personal projects and businesses. I am hoping to release it come fall time as I have been spending a lot of time doing home reno projects and out on the boat enjoying the water.
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