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Comment by tobych | Hacker News Reader

Fabric isn't mentioned once in the README. Says "We didn't like the alternatives out there." with no details.

Having said that, it looks like the HTTP server is the USP here. Being able to have non-techies run Fabric tasks is definitely a goal that's passed me fleetingly in the night. So, add this to Fabric and we're good.

EDIT: The author, Dan Lecocq is near me in Seattle so, what with it being a small world and all, I just wrote to him (in case he's not the author of this thread) via his blog to ask him what he didn't like about Fabric, and suggested he respond here.

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As a user of and sometimes contributor to fabric, I would like to point out that fabric is really good, but not perfect. No software really is. There are times I have chafed against fabric -- sometimes I would like it to be "heavier" doing more things automatically, and there are others I would like it to be "lighter", getting out of my way so I can just do my stuff. I will still reach for fabric first when I need tools, but it is nice to have alternatives available for those times I need something else.

Similarly, it frequently benefits all projects to have a few alternatives and different implementations for the same concept. Ideas can be explored independently and features can be borrowed back and forth. If nothing else, and provided that shovel gets to a fuller development stage, this could be a good thing for all.

The only thing I don't like about Fabric ( and perhaps I missed reading a step in the docs ) is working with very complex systems, I wanted to break fabric recipes/scripts into multiple files and found doing `fab -f zkservers.py reload` slightly tedious. I've much rather do `./zkservers.py reload`

> Being able to have non-techies run Fabric tasks is definitely a goal that's passed me fleetingly in the night.

Isn't that equipping monkeys with guns? We all know what happens when you do that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AabGdnTxqD0

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