DEVOPSdigest

ActiveState introduced the ActiveState Platform Command Line Interface (CLI), the State Tool, which aims to automate the kinds of manual tasks that frustrate developers, such as the setup of development and test systems.

With the State Tool, this kind of setup -- i.e., all the instructions in the Readme -- can be reduced to a single command.

ActiveState has built the State Tool to address many of the tasks that plague developers at project setup or worse, when they have to dive back into an older project. These include environment setups that don’t work the first time; dependencies, system libraries and build tools that aren’t pinned, limiting build reproducibility; and an abundance of poorly documented and maintained ad hoc scripts, which affect productivity.

All these tasks are considered “part of the job”, are chronically underestimated, and steal valuable coding time from developers. And with the trend toward microservices, more projects are getting started more often, which translates into more projects needing to be maintained.

The State Tool offers developers an all-in-one tool that can be used to automate all of the ad hoc tasks that arise on a day to day basis. In conjunction with the ActiveState Platform, which can automatically build and update Python and Perl runtime environments for Windows and Linux in minutes, the State Tool lets developers:

● Deploy a consistent runtime environment into a virtual environment on every developer’s machine, as well as across CI/CD systems with a single command

● Centrally create secrets that can be securely shared with all team members more easily than using a password manager, email, or Slack

● Create and share cross-platform scripts that can include secrets in order to kick off builds and run tests, simplifying and speeding up common development tasks

● Centrally automate all of the development workflows that developers typically address with one-off, poorly documented scripts

Jeff Rouse, vice president, product management, said: “Developers are a hardy bunch. They suffer through a thousand annoyances at project startup/restart time, but soldier on anyway. It’s just the way things have always been done. With the State Tool, it doesn’t have to stay that way. The State Tool addresses all the hidden costs in a project that sap developer productivity. This includes automating environment setup to secrets sharing, and even automating the day to day scripts that everyone counts on to get their jobs done. Developers can finally stop solving the same annoying problems over and over again, and just rely on the State Tool so they can spend more time coding.”