6 ms·

You are correct. The reason we built this tool is because all of the scripts we found had sharp edges when we tried to use them in production at scale (I talk a

You are correct. The reason we built this tool is because all of the scripts we found had sharp edges when we tried to use them in production at scale (I talk about some of them here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43730136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43730136). Most of these scripts were designed for a world where there was A Blessed Deployment Machine that acted as its own de facto centralized control plane. We're designed for a newer world where publishing is just another piece of your CI, so you need more features to handle concurrency control, distributed signing, incremental index rebuilds, etc.

benwilber0 1y ago
What is an example of something that would require "distributed signing"?
- ilikebits 1y ago
  Our use case is customers who (1) want to use a managed cloud hosting service that we provide, but (2) are not willing to give us their signing keys. Our design allows them to keep all of their signing keys local to their environment. To our knowledge, we have not found another provider who supports both of these requirements. It's not some amazing technical innovation, but it is one of those annoying paper cuts that builds up with all the others.
  - rlpb 1y ago
    Signing an unsigned apt repository is about three gpg commands though. I don't see how this kind of thing requires a whole separate product.
    - ilikebits 1y ago
      Yeah, solving this locally for one repository definitely isn't that hard at all. Most of the features we're building become useful when you're trying to build CI integrations for a larger team while also complying with enterprise security requirements (e.g. audit logging, HSM key protections, etc.).
  - benwilber0 1y ago
    > when we tried to use them in production at scale Debian and Ubuntu have been using them in production and "at scale" for decades. What are the "sharp edges" that you're trying to solve?
    - ilikebits 1y ago
      That's true! The Debian and Ubuntu folks are also experts at this. In our experience, the sharp edges generally affect teams that don't have a lot of in-house expertise in this, and where release engineering is not a core engineering competency that they want to invest in.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

benwilber0 1y ago

What is an example of something that would require "distributed signing"?

ilikebits 1y ago
Our use case is customers who (1) want to use a managed cloud hosting service that we provide, but (2) are not willing to give us their signing keys. Our design allows them to keep all of their signing keys local to their environment. To our knowledge, we have not found another provider who supports both of these requirements. It's not some amazing technical innovation, but it is one of those annoying paper cuts that builds up with all the others.
- rlpb 1y ago
  Signing an unsigned apt repository is about three gpg commands though. I don't see how this kind of thing requires a whole separate product.
  - ilikebits 1y ago
    Yeah, solving this locally for one repository definitely isn't that hard at all. Most of the features we're building become useful when you're trying to build CI integrations for a larger team while also complying with enterprise security requirements (e.g. audit logging, HSM key protections, etc.).
- benwilber0 1y ago
  > when we tried to use them in production at scale Debian and Ubuntu have been using them in production and "at scale" for decades. What are the "sharp edges" that you're trying to solve?
  - ilikebits 1y ago
    That's true! The Debian and Ubuntu folks are also experts at this. In our experience, the sharp edges generally affect teams that don't have a lot of in-house expertise in this, and where release engineering is not a core engineering competency that they want to invest in.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]