Using modules, you can add custom promise types to CFEngine, to manage new resources. In this blog post, I’d like to introduce some of the first official modules, namely git and systemd promise types. They were both written by Fabio Tranchitella, who normally works on our other product, Mender.io. He decided to learn some CFEngine and within a couple of weeks he’s contributed 3 modules, showing just how easy it is to implement new promise types. Thanks, Fabio!

I recently had a minor task involving changing an option - on one of our command line tools - from taking a required argument, to taking an optional argument. This should be easy they said; just change the respective option struct to take an optional argument, add a colon to the optstring, and get on with your life. Well, it proved to be easier said than done. My initial expectation was that a solution similar to the one below should just work. And it does work, just not in the way I expected.