batou - a multi-(component|environment|platform|.*) deployment tool

batou is a service deployment utility inspired by tools like Puppet, Fabric, and other modern tools. It made a short appearance in a lightning talk and at the sprints during EP 2012.

The talk gives an overview and demonstrates with practical examples how we deploy web applications with many complex components:

• modelling service components with Python
• multiple environments
• multiple platforms
• development environments
• convergent behaviour
• remote deployments
• secrets management (database passwords, SSL certificates, …)
• no additional run-time dependencies

I will show how the real-life requirements in our projects led us to develop a general model that integrates existing practices without building a huge stack of technologies.