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Comment by konspence | Hacker News Reader

Any take on how this looks for someone who doesn't work at Amazon?

I know Apollo is their deployment tool. No idea how they plays into a Kubernetes or even container stack.

Conceptually, there is a lot of overlap. Apollo had a few layers to it but would, more or less, matched kubernetes plus additional tooling. Dare I say closer to openshift? Brazil, the build tool, infrastructure and repository was similar to using nixpkgs. Brazil had some features beyond nixpkgs that were absolutely essential for an business like Amazon, but otherwise the goals and even techniques overlapped.

I onboarded very, very quickly by already knowing nixpkgs and container management. The concepts translated well. A few aspects that didn't either were things Amazon handled that other tools have yet to encounter: Cool to learn about. Or historical bits that didn't matter: fine to ignore.

> Apollo had a few layers to it but would, more or less, matched kubernetes plus additional tooling

Have you looked at the codebase? Apollo and Brazil are tiny compared to Kubernetes & friends. You could reimplement them with a small script on top of traditional Linux package management (modulo the web UI).

As someone who worked on Apollo, I'd challenge this. Without divulging any details, Apollo is a non trivial system.

Yeah, I work adjacent to the Apollo org (and have worked near Pfrheak, too. Hi!). I would love to see a HackerNews commenter's idea of what it would take to re-implement Apollo. I'll bring popcorn.

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