Add blog post introducting cloudy

2024-09-25-cloudy.md

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+title: Cloudy: CLI tool for easily spinning up compute instances in the cloud
+summary: Run one-off compute instances in the cloud with an interface similar to Docker
+tags: haskell
+draft: false
+------------------------------------------------------
+
+I recently released a new CLI tool,
+[Cloudy](https://github.com/cdepillabout/cloudy).  Cloudy makes it easy to spin
+up one-off compute instances using various cloud providers (like AWS, Scaleway,
+etc).
+
+In practice, it feels similar to tools like `docker run` or `vagrant`, but for
+running temporary compute instances in the cloud, instead of running locally.
+
+Cloudy gives a nice CLI interface (with good Bash completion) for interactively
+managing your running compute instances.
+
+This post gives a brief overview of how to use Cloudy, and lays out my future
+plans for the project.  You can find out more information in the project's
+[README](https://github.com/cdepillabout/cloudy/blob/master/README.md).
+
+## How to Use Cloudy
+
+Cloudy supports multiple cloud providers:
+
+- [AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/) ([support planned](https://github.com/cdepillabout/cloudy/issues/2))
+- [Scaleway](https://www.scaleway.com/)
+
+The following instructions assume you're using Scaleway.
+
+First, you'll need to setup a configuration file for Cloudy, as detailed
+[in the README](https://github.com/cdepillabout/cloudy/blob/master/README.md#setup-for-scaleway).
+
+Once you've done that, you can create your first instance:
+
+```console
+$ cloudy scaleway create \
+    --zone nl-ams-1 \
+    --instance-type PLAY2-NANO \
+    --volume-size 75 \
+    --image-id "1ec31ce3-bec3-4866-81fc-08d4b6966f9f"
+```
+
+This command creates a compute instance in Scaleway in zone
+[`nl-ams-1`](https://registry.terraform.io/providers/scaleway/scaleway/latest/docs/guides/regions_and_zones),
+using instance type `PLAY2-NANO` (https://www.vpsbenchmarks.com/hosters/scaleway/plans/play2-nano),
+with a 75 GB disk, and using an Ubuntu 24.04 disk image.
+
+After creating the image, you can SSH to it with the command:
+
+```console
+$ cloudy ssh
+```
+
+When you're finished, you can shut it down with the command:
+
+```console
+$ cloudy destroy
+```
+
+## Instance Setup Scripts
+
+One of the main features of Cloudy is the ability to specify Instance Setup
+scripts.  These are YAML files that contain cloud-init scripts to do things
+like install packages and run commands on first boot.
+
+Here's an example of a Cloudy Instance Setup script:
+
+`~/.config/cloudy/instance-setups/hello-world.yaml`:
+
+```yaml
+short-description: An example instance-setup script
+
+cloud-init-user-data: |
+  #cloud-config
+
+  # Install these packages using the default package manager of the instance.
+  packages:
+    - cowsay
+
+  # Run these commands after bootup.
+  runcmd:
+    - |
+      /usr/games/cowsay "hello world from Cloudy!" > /hello-from-cloudy
+```
+
+You can see that this script uses a cloud-init `cloud-config` file to install
+the package `cowsay`, and then use it to print a message to the file
+`/hello-from-cloudy`
+
+You can specify an Instance Setup script when creating a new instance:
+
+```console
+$ cloudy scaleway create \
+    --zone nl-ams-1 \
+    --instance-type PLAY2-NANO \
+    --volume-size 75 \
+    --image-id "1ec31ce3-bec3-4866-81fc-08d4b6966f9f" \
+    --instance-setup hello-world
+```
+
+Instance Setup scripts give you quite a lot of flexibility in how your compute
+instances are setup.
+
+## Future Plans
+
+I have a few plans for future improvements to Cloudy:
+
+1. Support more cloud providers.
+
+    It would be nice to support more cloud providers, like AWS, GCP, Azure,
+    DigitalOcean, etc.
+
+    It would also be nice to make Cloudy flexible enough so that support for
+    additional cloud providers could be provided by plugins, similar to how
+    Terraform has plugins for different cloud providers.
+
+2. Provide more built-in Instance Setup scripts.
+
+    Cloudy currently provides a few example Instance Setup scripts, but it
+    would be nice to provide additional scripts that do common tasks, like
+    setup popular web servers, databases, programming environments, etc.
+
+3. Add more functionality for operations to be performed after booting
+    an instance.
+
+    It would be nice to add in support to Instance Setup scripts for doing
+    things like copying files back to the host after creating an instance,
+    running arbitrary commands on either the host or the cloud instance, etc.
+
+    One use for this would be to copy files like public keys (after they are
+    generated) from the cloud instance to the local host.  This would make
+    it easy to setup things like VPNs.
+
+4. Add the ability to specify input variables to Instance Setup scripts.
+
+    I'm imagining this would work similarly to Terraform variables.
+
+## Conclusion
+
+Cloudy aims to be an easy-to-use imperative CLI tool for spinning up one-off
+compute instances in various cloud providers.
+
+PRs and issues are welcome helping with any of the above features, or even just
+fixing small bugs or making improvements.