Cause drift, detect it, and decide what to do about it

short · 45 min · Objective 2.2

Task

Make a change outside the code, discover it the way a scheduled plan would, and then take both possible decisions -- revert and adopt -- so you have done each once.

Steps

  1. Apply a small environment from code and confirm a second apply reports no changes.
  2. Change something by hand outside the tool -- rename a container, change a label, alter a file the template manages.
  3. Run plan WITHOUT applying, and save the output to lab/drift-plan.txt. Record which resource it wants to change and whether it says update or REPLACE.
  4. Apply, confirm the manual change was reverted, and write in lab/decisions.md what this proves about an emergency fix made in a console at 2am.
  5. Now make a second manual change that is actually CORRECT, update the code to match it instead, and confirm plan is empty. Record that as the adopt decision.

Verify

test -s lab/drift-plan.txt && grep -Eci 'change|update|replace|~|-/\+' lab/drift-plan.txt
grep -Eci 'revert' lab/decisions.md
grep -Eci 'adopt' lab/decisions.md

Both decisions must be recorded. Drift left undecided is the state that causes the surprise, because the next apply decides for you.

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