query-bot, HCL2, Docker without Docker

So I've ended up writing 246 lines of Go in my quest to build a Slack bot...introducing query-bot.

As I put it simply in the README:

query-bot is an unintelligent Slack bot for writing HTTP query responses to a given channel when user messages match pre-defined commands.

It's basically a Slack bot for curl.

It's pretty bare-bones currently, and I have a pending feature branch with non-legacy authentication and some key refactoring. Though I have to say that I love working with Go. Error handling is dead simple, Viper is a killer configuration module, and my container image is only 14MB!

Packer templates in HCL2

Let's leave JSON templates behind:

$ packer hcl2_upgrade template.json

Note: v1.7.1 required if you want the above command to also upgrade variables to HCL2 local variables

Hashicorp's introduction to Packer and HCL2.

Bookmarked

Docker without Docker
https://fly.io/blog/docker-without-docker/

• fly.io is a platform that I have been wanting to try out (multi-region containers with BGP Anycast + Firecracker micro-VMs!) and this deep dive on their blog about their container to micro-VM deployment pipeline speaks volumes about their investment in building a cool product.

How to make an awesome Python package in 2021
https://antonz.org/python-packaging/

• When you want to make that one-off Python utility a little more official...