Difference between convergence and idempotence in Chef

Question

What is the basic difference between convergence and idempotence in Chef?

Answer 1

Convergence and idempotence are not Chef-specific. They're generally attributed to configuration management theory, though have use in other fields, notably mathematics.

Let's start with the more basic, idempotent. We're going to ignore the mathematic use of idempotent, and focus instead on what configuration management people mean when they talk about it. That is: "multiple applications of the same action do not have side effects on the system state." A simple example of an idempotent operation is mkdir -p:

mkdir -p /var/lib/statedir/myapp

No matter how many times we run this command, it will result in that tree being created. Another way of stating this about idempotent operations is, "running the tool over and over doesn't change the system after the first time."

Now to contrast that with convergence. Generically, to converge means to bring [people or] things together. In configuration management, convergence means to bring the system state in line with a defined policy. That is, changes are made on the system only if they need to be made. A simple example of a convergent operation is:

if [ ! -d /var/lib/statedir/myapp ]; then
  mkdir -p /var/lib/statedir/myapp
fi

This is convergent because we're only executing the mkdir command if the desired directory does not exist. We also call this a "test and repair" operation. That is, we test the current state of the specific thing we're managing, and then repair it with a specific command or operation if it is not in that state. That is what Chef does behind the scenes with a resource like this:

directory '/var/lib/statedir/myapp' do
  recursive true
end

The way we (Chef) talk about this is that Chef takes idempotent actions to converge the system to the state declared by the various resources. Every resource in Chef is declarative, and performs a test about the current state of the resource, and then repairs the system to match that.

To get deeper into the weeds about how Chef works, it has a "compile" phase and a "converge" phase in a Chef run. In the "compile" phase, it evaluates the Ruby recipes on the node, and it is looking for resource objects that it adds to a "resource collection." Once it has evaluated all the recipes, it then enters the "converge" phase where it iterates over the resource collection, taking the appropriate action to put the resources into the desired state, whereby users are created, files are written, packages are installed, and so forth.

Answer 2

_{Disclaimer: I'm an outsider in the configuration management community and it took me hours of reading to figure out what follows. I criticise the configuration management community in this answer, so you should be aware that their world is not my world, I don't even use any configuration management tools in my current job, and I'm judging them only on what I can find on Google.}

Definitions

To say that an operation is convergent roughly means that it puts whatever part of the system it manages into a specified state.

When configuration management people say that an operation is idempotent, they typically mean that if you run it a second time right after running it once, the second run will terminate immediately without doing any redundant work.

When a resource is described as idempotent in the context of Chef in particular, it means that subsequent Chef runs after the resource has already been put into the desired state don't count it as "updated" in the x/y resources updated message at the end of the run.

Note that most built-in resources satisfy this final, strictest definition of idempotence by default, and you can achieve it in your own recipes and custom resources by using only_if and not_if guards and converge_if_changed.

Some commentary, and a note about other definitions

Confusingly, the majority of definitions of "idempotent" you find on the internet will not match either of the ones I've just given. Rather than trusting what the experts say the definition is, I'm inferring it from observing how they actually use the term. It is infuriatingly common to find somebody give a definition of "idempotent" and then use the word in a way that clearly doesn't cohere with that definition a few paragraphs later.

To explore this, let's start by exploring definitions of "idempotent" that exist outside of the field of configuration management. Lots of such definitions are listed on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idempotence. The ones that most frequently get (wrongly) given as the meaning of idempotence in a configuration management context are as follows:

• In mathematics, a function f is said to be idempotent if f(f(x)) = f(x) for all possible values of x.
• In mathematics, a whole slew of other sorts of mathematical objects are said to be idempotent if they meet some formal definition or other (generally with a common theme of "doing an operation repeatedly has the same effect as doing it once").
• In programming, to say that a function or procedure is idempotent means one of two things:
  1. In the case of a function that takes an argument and returns a value, exactly the same as the mathematical meaning.
  2. In the case of a function that has side effects, that, after calling the function once, subsequent calls leave the system state unchanged.

A slew of confused sources give one of these definitions as the meaning of "idempotent" in a configuration management context, and then promptly go on to use the term in a way that makes clear that it's not really the definition they're using. Some examples:

• Pace's competing answer to this very question. There he claims that:

  A step is idempotent if, after multiple executions of the step on a system (whose underlying state has not changed), the result is the same as if the step had been executed once.

  but then goes on to give this as an example of a step that isn't idempotent:

  rm -rf /var/log/myapp
  mkdir -p /var/log/myapp
  

  Clearly this step does in fact meet Pace's definition of idempotence, since running it multiple times in a row gets us to the same final state as running it once (namely, a state where /var/log/myapp exists and is empty). However, it does redundant work when run a second time, and so Pace describes it as non-idempotent.

• Mischa Taylor and Seth Vargo's book Learning Chef: A Guide to Configuration Management and Automation. In there, they claim:

  When Chef code is idempotent, it can run multiple times on the same system and the results will always be identical, without producing unintended side effects.

  but then later, commenting on one of their example recipes:

  Does our recipe pass the idempotency test? Sadly, no. ... Chef mistakenly thinks there’s still stuff it needs to do—2/3 resources updated in this second run. If the recipe were truly idempotent, we’d see 0/3 resources updated. Chef would inspect the state of the system, recognize that nothing had changed since the last run—no one touched the node between the two runs—and perform no resource updates

  Again, they're stating a definition of idempotence based upon the system state being unchanged when a recipe is run multiple times, but actually using the word to mean that unnecessary work is avoided.

• Ben Ford's Idempotence: not just a big and scary word on the Puppet blog, where he first gives this definition of idempotence...

  Idempotence is simply a word that describes an operation that will have the same effect whether you run it once or 10,001 times. Adding one is not idempotent because the result keeps incrementing, but multiplying by one is idempotent because the answer is the same no matter how many times you multiply it!

  Then he gives this example of idempotence, which, while it is consistent with the definition given above, is a little suspicious - because it focuses on subsequent executions not doing redundant work, rather than on them reaching the same result:

  Imagine a time when you were 12 and your mom asked you to take out the trash. Being the good kid you were, you dropped the GameBoy and jumped right up to do as you were asked, yeah?

  But then 30 minutes later when she walked back through the living room and saw you curled up on the couch playing "Super Mario Land," she told you again to take out the trash. I strongly suspect that you did not leap up to go take out an empty trash bag. Instead you said, "Already did it, Mom!" That's idempotence. The effect of being told once to take the trash out is the same as the effect of being told twice. You didn't do it again, because it had already been done.

  Then finally he throws his definition to the wind and gives an example of an operation that he claims is not idempotent despite the fact that repeated executions of it will reach the same result:

  So how about that time you were chastised for writing non-idempotent execs? People new to Puppet generally have shell scripts they're replacing, and they write code that looks sort of like this:

  exec { '/usr/bin/curl http: //server.net/packages/package.tar.gz -o /tmp/package.tar.gz ': }
  
  -> exec { 'tar -xf /tmp/package.tar.gz -C /tmp/package': }
  
  -> exec { '/tmp/package/installer.sh': }
  
  file { '/tmp/package':
      ensure  => absent,
      force   => true,
      require => Exec[ '/tmp/package/installer.sh'],
  }
  
  file { '/tmp/package.tar.gz':
      ensure  => absent,
      force   => true,
      require => Exec[ '/tmp/package/installer.sh'],
  }
  

  So what's wrong with that? It works, right? Download the tarball, extract it, install the thing, then clean up after yourself. It looks like it should run perfectly, assuming no typos or network issues. And it will. But it will run perfectly every time Puppet runs. In other words, it will download and run the installer script every thirty minutes!

  But the result will be the same, Ben! Earlier, that's the detail that you told us the definition of idempotence revolved around!

  Clearly, Ben is really applying the "avoid redundant work" definition of idempotence, despite what he claims.

Can an operation be idempotent but not convergent?

Yes. Such an operation would be one that doesn't bring the system to a specified end state, but does avoid redundant work on consecutive runs. Pace's answer gives an example of such an operation, and Thinking Like A Chef provides another:

A system can be idempotent without being convergent. For example if we had the pseudo code if file X does not exist, write the current timestamp to file X that would be idempotent, but it can’t really be said to converge on a particular end state.

The best practical example I can think of of an operation that you could characterise as idempotent-but-not-convergent would be installing a package using a typical package manager's install command that:

• installs the latest version if the package is not installed, but
• doesn't update an older version if it's already installed.

The state (the version of the package you get) is not determined by the recipe, so it's arguably not convergent, but it successfully avoids unnecessary work.

Can an operation be convergent but not idempotent?

Yes, absolutely! A simple example is Ben Ford's one, already quoted above, of unconditionally downloading a file to some local path. It's convergent, because the end state is always the same (the file exists), but is not idempotent, because it does the unnecessary work of redownloading the file each time it runs.

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For what it's worth, I find it frustrating that the configuration management community have appropriated a term that already had a clear meaning in the broader world of programming and then used it in a related but still clearly different way, without ever providing a formal definition of what it means in their world. A search of the Chef docs (https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fdocs.chef.io+idempotent) yields many uses of the term, but no definition. It's not surprising that this topic confuses people when most of the definitions of the term floating around don't match the usage.

I've only managed to find one person who has ever given definitions of idempotence that are consistent with the way the term is used, and that's coderanger (aka Noah Kantrowitz). In Thinking Like A Chef, which I quoted from previously, he writes:

“idempotently” ... means that the actor does as little as possible to achieve the desired state.

and in an IRC conversation from 2015 he writes:

Idempotent means not taking actions when they aren't needed, convergent means it "settles" on a specific final state.

Other than this one man, I have literally not been able to find anyone else who has ever given a definition of the term that matches how the whole configuration management community seems to use it.