Show HN: The first open-source Infrastructure-as-Code framework

[zoomzoom]

https://cncframework.com/

Hey HN, Zach here, cofounder of Coherence (withcoherence.com). After over two years supporting customers deploying apps to AWS and GCP we’ve come to the conclusion that developers really want to own the customization and configurability that the public cloud provides without having to write and maintain all the glue code that goes with it.

That’s why we’re launching CNC (https://github.com/coherenceplatform/cnc), an open-source framework that equips developers with the right tools to deploy applications with precision. Rooted in the principles of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using terraform, cnc translates high level service definitions into reference architecture based infrastructure across various environments — whether it’s for development, staging, production, or ephemeral environments. For those who have used AWS's Amplify CLI, think of cnc as a broader, adaptable framework that supports your unique deployment needs.

Check it out and please contribute. We’re excited to see how this project evolves.

[jph]

I'm in your target market, and in my opinion you have an opportunity to rephrase your tagline "The first open-source Infrastructure-as-Code framework" because your tagline makes me think you're ancient and retro-- think back twenty years or more to Capistrano, Chef, Puppet, etc. as just a few examples.

Just to double-check, here's what Google shows me for your own tagline:

"Chef is an open source infrastructure as code framework, or set of solutions and approaches that helps you automate your infrastructure and applications."

"Terraform is an open source Infrastructure-as-Code framework originally created by HashiCorp"

"Pulumi is an open source Infrastructure-as-Code framework that provisions resources utilizing common programming languages."

etc.

If you're open to adjusting your marketing, I can also suggest you add OpenTofu to your homepage where you currently list Terraform. OpenTofu is more up to date with the open source community especially for IaC. It's a crowded space so aim to highlight your value proposition instead of writing "first".

Just my two cents. Hope this helps.

[mrlase → jph]

I don't even think it makes them look ancient, it makes them look odd for claiming that when they clearly are not the first open source IAC framework...

OP, why exactly are you describing yourself as the first one?

[zoomzoom → jph]

Appreciate this feedback, thanks so much for sharing!

The tagline clearly doesn't say what we want here, but the idea is that we are a framework that sits on top of IaC tools like the ones listed above, and makes them easier to use. Under the hood, cnc uses terraform/opentofu to actually manage infra, the cnc layer adds new concepts like environments onto those tools as well as providing a much simpler, higher level configuration with cnc.yml, while still enabling you to edit the templates directly so you're not limited in the infra you can deploy for your app. In this way, we're the first tool of that kind, sort of like a "PaaS in your own cloud" but we expose the plumbing as a CLI.

Thanks again!

[drstein → zoomzoom]

What you just said is a lot more descriptive than your website.

[flurie]

One problem tools like these tend to have, to take Amplify as an example, is that they turn what might be a complicated problem served by heterogeneous tools and glue code into a very narrow happy path solution and dragons in all other directions. When the problem is handled piecemeal, the dragons are local to whatever specific problem areas exist; when the problem is centralized, the dragons are everywhere.

[detaro]

In addition to what jph said, if you want to claim to be "first" or "new" at anything you should explain what exactly that is about. The README blurb reads like it could be about at least a dozen other projects, with no hint why I should think that yours is especially interesting or better.

[poshmosh]

I don't see any reason to use this for AWS over CDK. CDK already has some pretty higher level modules that make it really easy to setup ecs, k8s, vpc, ect.

[adamaziz15 → poshmosh]

I think they might be different things. Terraform is comparable to CDK isn't it? and this uses terraform, so in the same way I think its higher level than CDK and could even one day have it as an option (e.g. terraform, pulumi, CF, CDK, openTofu etc.) I could be totally off base though, have not really used CDK tbh

[resizeitplz]

Wake me up when this can run two stages: TF/OT/Pulumi/etc to provision infrastructure, and then Ansible/Salt/etc to configure them.

Glibness aside, this looks promising, I would love an orchestrator for both infrastructure and configuration management though. From the readme, I'm guessing that's somewhat doable with the `Toolbox` feature; be cool to have native integration for more tools though.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the scope/intention of the tool though.

[dayofthedaleks]

Documentation link leads to main page, no documentation section present in site menu.