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Sat Aug 10 11:36:37 EDT 2019

idempotent global state

Here's something I run into a lot:

- I have some script that sets up some global state on a machine,
  e.g. a network connection

- In order to make it idempotent I kill ALL instances of network setup
  and replace it with the one I want.


This isn't actually idempotent in the normal sense (don't do anything
if it is already set), but is idempotent in the observable sense: make
sure something is set a certain way.

So if a check is added to not change anything if already set up we can
agree that they are basically the same.  That check is just a cache.
The end result is important.

Now what I wonder: is this actually good practice?  In practical linux
day-to-day work it is a lot of labour to make a proper "state
manager", but a quick and dirty "kill any other setups and replace
with desired one" is maybe acceptable?

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