Custom Infrastructure CLI
A bespoke command-line interface, built with the Automation API, to provide simplified, high-level commands for managing infrastructure.
Overview
A Custom Infrastructure CLI is a tool built using the Pulumi Automation API to create a tailored command-line experience for managing a company's specific infrastructure. Instead of having developers run `pulumi up` with many configuration parameters, a company can build a CLI with commands like `my-cli deploy-service --name=api` or `my-cli create-dev-db`. These commands, implemented in a language like Go or Python, use the Automation API in the background to execute the complex Pulumi workflows, abstracting away the details and ensuring consistency.
✨ Key Features
- Abstracts complex Pulumi workflows into simple commands.
- Embeds Pulumi engine directly into the CLI application.
- Enforces organizational standards and conventions.
- Can be written in any language supported by the Automation API (Go, Python, C#, etc.).
- Provides a familiar, user-friendly interface for developers.
🎯 Key Differentiators
- Provides a strongly-typed, programmatic interface to the Pulumi engine, which is more robust than parsing CLI output.
- Allows for complex logic and user interaction to be handled within the CLI itself.
- Creates a single, cohesive tool for domain-specific operations.
Unique Value: Dramatically simplifies the developer workflow for interacting with cloud infrastructure by providing a high-level, task-oriented CLI.
🎯 Use Cases (3)
✅ Best For
- Ploy, an open-source Heroku-like interface for deploying Docker images to Kubernetes, was built using Pulumi's Automation API with a Go CLI.
💡 Check With Vendor
Verify these considerations match your specific requirements:
- Teams that are comfortable using the standard Pulumi CLI directly.
- Projects where the overhead of developing and maintaining a custom CLI is not justified.
🏆 Alternatives
Building a custom CLI with the Automation API is more robust and maintainable than creating shell scripts that wrap the standard Pulumi CLI, as it avoids brittle command parsing and provides better error handling and programmatic control.
💻 Platforms
🔌 Integrations
💰 Pricing
Free tier: Custom-built tool; cost is based on development effort and underlying cloud resource usage.
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