Here’s a comparison of Puppet, Chef, Ansible, and Salt, including their creation dates and current activity:
Puppet
- Creation Date: 2005
- Language: Ruby
- Approach: Declarative
- Activity Today:
- Active Development: Puppet is actively maintained with regular updates.
- Community: Strong community support with frequent contributions and discussions.
- Usage: Widely used in enterprise environments, especially for large-scale infrastructure.
Chef
- Creation Date: 2009
- Language: Ruby (with DSL)
- Approach: Imperative (with some declarative elements)
- Activity Today:
- Active Development: Chef continues to see regular updates and maintenance.
- Community: Active, but slightly less vibrant than in its peak years. Still has a dedicated user base.
- Usage: Popular in DevOps circles, particularly for complex configurations.
Ansible
- Creation Date: 2012
- Language: Python (YAML for playbooks)
- Approach: Declarative
- Activity Today:
- Active Development: Ansible is under active development, with frequent updates and new features.
- Community: Very active, with a large number of contributors and users.
- Usage: Extremely popular due to its simplicity, agentless architecture, and ease of use.
Salt
- Creation Date: 2011
- Language: Python
- Approach: Declarative and Imperative
- Activity Today:
- Active Development: Salt is actively maintained, with updates released regularly.
- Community: Active community, though not as large as Ansible’s or Puppet’s.
- Usage: Used in environments that require both configuration management and orchestration, with strong support for large-scale automation.
Each of these tools is still active and relevant, with Puppet and Ansible being the most widely used in modern environments. Ansible’s simplicity and agentless nature make it particularly popular, while Puppet is known for its robustness in managing large-scale infrastructures. Chef remains strong in environments requiring complex automation, and Salt is valued for its speed and flexibility, especially in large distributed systems.