configin

Configin is a fictional open standard and language for declarative configuration management and deployment. It describes the desired state of a computing environment in a platform-agnostic way, using resources, relationships, and policies. A Configin configuration lists resources such as packages, services, files, users, and cloud resources, along with their properties and dependencies. The goal is idempotence: applying the configuration repeatedly should reach the same state without unnecessary changes. It also emphasizes portability across operating systems and cloud providers through a stable, versioned schema rather than implementation-specific details.

Configin originated as a hypothetical framework in systems engineering discussions and in experimental repositories during the 2010s and 2020s. It is not an official standard, and no single implementation has become dominant. It serves as a reference model for debating declarative infrastructures and for prototyping compatibility layers atop existing tools.

Syntax and semantics: Configin describes state as a graph of resources. Each resource has a type and attributes, and dependencies are explicit. A resolver computes a convergence plan to bring the system to the desired state. Configin supports conditional logic, derived values, and versioned schemas to evolve configurations without breaking them.

Implementations and usage: In fictional ecosystems, components such as configin-core and configin-lang provide parsers, validators, and runtimes. Bindings for common languages let users generate Configin manifests, which are applied by a runtime to provision infrastructure, install software, or configure services. Integrations with CI/CD pipelines are typical for testing and enforcing desired states.

Reception and critique: Configin is discussed as an alternative to YAML-centric infrastructure-as-code approaches. Proponents cite improved dependency modeling and planability, while critics point to added complexity, a smaller ecosystem, and the risk of drift from practical tooling.

See also: Infrastructure as code, Declarative configuration, Configuration management, Kubernetes, Terraform, Puppet, Ansible.