Why SALVE?

SALVE is designed to

  • Safely deploy configuration files kept in a VCS
  • Be (much) less complicated than existing software for this purpose

Much Safer Than Shell Scripts

One of the typical solutions for personalized configuration is to keep a set of shell scripts which do the deployment work as file copies, directory creations, and so forth. Why use SALVE if it offers strictly fewer features than a shell? Because it is significantly safer to run SALVE than a shell script which may have critical typos!

SALVE does not assume that you can actually perform all of the actions you requested, or that you have correctly specified your manifests. You may have typos in your files, which will be caught before any actions are run. The system may have broken permissions for some directories, or you may be trying to copy a file which doesn't exist.

The ultimate goal is to ensure, as much as possible, that the requested actions can be executed successfully. This includes validating acceptable values, and ensuring the effective UID grants sufficient permissions to perform actions. The burden is always ultimately on you to ensure that your configuration is correct, but your tools should make that easy, not hard. SALVE will do its best to detect and abort on errors pertaining to botched specifications prior to any part of the execution beginning.

Minimal Dependencies

SALVE does not rely on external tools like Debian's dpkg or OSX's MacPorts. Ultimately, all that's required is python2.6+, a working shell, and permissions to perform the operations requested in the Manifests.

SALVE does not use any python eggs or other packages, and attempts to depend more on python's extensive set of builtins than shell commands.

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