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Difference between boxen and puppet


Summary: What is the difference between boxen and puppet?

Detail: I know boxen is a wrapper written around puppet(correct me if I am wrong), but what is it exactly that boxen is doing that puppet cannot do?. In another words what is the difference between boxen and puppet?. I just started using boxen, have never used puppet before, but because of boxen I am also learning how to use puppet. I have watched the boxen presentation, done by the team that created boxen http://vimeo.com/61172067

In this presentation they talked about what boxen can do, but didn't really mentioned what puppet cant do that boxen can.

I hope this is not too broad question. Feel free to edit it to make it more specific.

Thanks,


Solution

  • From the documentation:

    Boxen is a framework for managing almost every aspect of your Mac. We built a massive standard library of Puppet modules optimized for Boxen to manage everything from running MySQL to installing Minecraft.

    So boxen is targetted specifically at Mac.

    Puppet seems to serve as the engine for it. Puppet itself aims to be able to manage any kind of system, mainly PCs that run *NIX or Windows, but even network devices are supported.

    The manifests you write for boxen are Puppet manifests. They are specialized in that you will be using Boxen's stock Puppet modules.

    It would appear that boxen has no capabilities beyond those of Puppet. It does add convenience, perhaps.