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AWS’ gift to sysadmins: a cloudy command line

Bah humbug! The documentation is scanty

With Christmas all-but upon us, Amazon Web Services has issued a gift to a certain type of Sysadmin: a command line interface for its cloud computing services.

The gift is perhaps a little too well-wrapped: you’ll need to visit GitHub to download the package and then have Python versions 2.6.x - 3.3.x. handy to run it. And of course it’s no use without an AWS account to drive with the new tool. But if your Christmas Eve leaves you time for those chores, you’ll be rewarded with the ability to drive multiple AWS products from the comfort of a text-only interface.

The CLI currently enjoys developer preview status and AWS says it’s keen for feedback from users. We’re happy to offer some in this article: fix this link to the documentation PDF – it’s producing a null document at the time of writing - and sysadmins might not feel the new CLI is a gift akin to a third-hand copy of the Steve Jobs biography nobody they know was nice enough to buy them last Christmas.

Those unwilling to wait for that to happen – we imagine it could take a while given the season – can find documentation here. ®

Bootnote

If that's not enough command line fun for you over the festive season, you can still download Neal Stephenson's seminal essay In the Beginning was the Command Line here.

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