I just sent a much-anticipated email to the blueprint-users and blueprint-dev mailing lists announcing Yum/RPM support.

Preliminary support for Yum/RPM-based Linux distributions is in the master branch on GitHub. Here's what changed:

https://github.com/devstructure/blueprint/compare/8b6db6f5dceffbae9bd0ffb4646723c1c49aea15...master

The two outstanding issues in the Yum/RPM world now are:

* Extra items in the default ignored-files list.
* Python 2.4 support for CentOS.

Thanks especially to Kal McFate for the initial work and to everyone who helped out with RPM commands and output along the way.

I've closed the original issue #5 so please open issues on GitHub for any problems you experience.

If you've been waiting for blueprint to support your favorite RPM-based distro, now's time time to see how easy it can be to reverse engineer your servers.

We're super excited to see that blueprint was chosen as the featured project in the new Github Reflog. It's like an Oscar for open-source geeks. Kind of? Maybe just a little bit? Ok, nevermind. Anway, a big thanks to the Github guys and we're looking forward to the weekly reflog!

This is one of the coolest projects I've seen in a long time. 

Simply put, Blueprint reverse engineers servers. It scans your system, records installed packages from various managers (aptitude, ruby's gem, python's pip, etc), archives software built from source, and records configuration file changes. It then packages your entire server configuration into a bootstrap.sh file with an attached archive. You can take that bootstrap package and run it anywhere to replicate your server setup.

We've gotten emails from potential contributors about the recently open-sourced blueprint tool. In an effort to centralize that discussion, we've setup 2 Google Groups. If you're interested in contributing, have ideas about blueprint or just need help, this is a great place to start. See you there!

Blueprint Users - http://groups.google.com/group/blueprint-users

Blueprint Dev - http://groups.google.com/group/blueprint-dev 

It's been a while since we've talked, but we haven't forgotten about you. However, things are changing and we want to bring you up to speed.

What's up?

Richard and I are obsessed with simplifying DevStructure. Our service has always revolved around 2 components - Blueprint and Sandbox. We've revamped Blueprint and Sandbox as standalone projects. And we're open-sourcing them, Blueprint today and Sandbox to follow.

Why are you doing this?

Two reasons. First, we want to make it as easy as possible to use our tools. Second, we want people to see, understand and contribute to how the software works. DevStructure accounts are no longer required and everything operates via the command line.

The new Blueprint

Blueprint reverse engineers a server. You work, like you always have, via the command line. Install system packages, language packages, source or modify configuration files. We'll work backwards to figure out what you did and store this information in a "blueprint". With a blueprint, you can recreate the environment on another server or export the configuration to Puppet or Chef.

We plan to continue improving the brains behind Blueprint to more accurately detect system changes. Currently it works only with Ubuntu servers, but we've started thinking about Redhat based systems.

Show me the code

Now you're in the loop. As always, if you have any questions please let us know. Otherwise check out the code and get started today.

• Source code
• Issue tracker
• Documentation