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saltstack
salt
Python2012–2025
saltstack / salt

salt

Software to automate the management and configuration of infrastructure and applications at scale.

24Distinct people
33Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
15.8KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Software to automate the management and configuration of infrastructure and applications at scale.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

It's a common misconception to read too much into Renderers. Salt's State system takes a data structure as input so each of the Renderer modules is really just what flavor of…

whiteinge used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 7:02:50 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year33 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2012-12-19 22:05:01 UTC to 2025-05-08 13:48:39 UTC.

02468102012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments20122013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 2 submissions, 8 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 1 submissions, 3 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 1 submissions, 6 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1028
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC413
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC716
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
Latest Salt Documentation Open an issue (bug report, feature request, etc.) Note When using salt-cloud -p with a profile, pass only the VM name on the command line. Specify VM attributes (memory, cpu, vcpu, etc.) in the profile configuration, not as command-line arguments. Salt is the world's fastest, most intelligent and scalable automation engine. About Salt Built on Python, Salt is an event-driven automation tool and framework to deploy, configure, and manage complex IT systems. Use Salt to automate common infrastructure administration tasks and ensure that all the components of your infrastructure are operating in a consistent desired state. Salt has many possible uses, including configuration management, which involves: Managing operating system deployment and configuration. Installing and configuring software applications and services. Managing servers, virtual machines, containers, databases, web servers, network devices, and more. Ensuring consistent configuration and preventing configuration drift. Salt is ideal for configuration management because it is pluggable, customizable, and plays well with many existing technologies. Salt enables you to deploy and manage applications that use any tech stack running on nearly any operating system, including different types of network devices such as switches and routers from a variety of vendors. In addition to configuration management Salt can also: Automate and orchestrate routine IT processes, such as common required tasks for scheduled server downtimes or upgrading operating systems or applications. Create self-aware, self-healing systems that can automatically respond to outages, common administration problems, or other important events. About our sponsors Salt powers VMware by Broadcom's VMware Salt (previously Aria Automation Config / vRealize Automation SaltStack Config / SaltStack Enterprise), and can be found under the hood of products from Juniper, Cisco, Cloudflare, Nutanix, SUSE, and Tieto, to name a few. The original sponsor of our community, SaltStack, was acquired by VMware in 2020. VMware was later acquired by Broadcom in 2023. The Salt Project remains an open source ecosystem that Broadcom supports and contributes to. Broadcom ensures the code integrity and quality of the Salt modules by acting as the official sponsor and manager of the Salt project. Many of the core Salt Project contributors are also Broadcom employees. This team carefully reviews and enhances the Salt modules to ensure speed, quality, and security. Download and install Salt Salt is tested and packaged to run on CentOS, Debian, RHEL, Ubuntu, MacOS, Windows, and more. Download Salt and get started now. See supported operating systems for more information. To download and install Salt, see: The Salt install guide Salt Project Repository: Linux (RPM) - Where Salt rpm packages are officially stored and distributed. Salt Project Repository: Linux (DEB) - Where Salt deb packages are officially stored and distributed. Salt Project Repository: GENERIC - Where Salt Windows, macOS, etc. (non-rpm, non-deb) packages are officially stored and distributed. Technical support Report bugs or problems using Salt by opening an issue: https://github.com/saltstack/salt/issues To join our community forum where you can exchange ideas, best practices, discuss technical support questions, and talk to project maintainers, join our Discord server: Salt Project Community Discord Salt Project documentation Installation instructions, tutorials, in-depth API and module documentation: The Salt install guide The Salt user guide Latest Salt documentation Salt's contributing guide Security advisories Keep an eye on the Salt Project Security Announcements landing page. Salt Project recommends subscribing to the Salt Project Security RSS feed to receive notification when new information is available regarding security announcements. Other channels to receive security announcements include the Salt Community mailing list and the Salt Project Community Discord. Responsibly reporting security vulnerabilities When reporting security vulnerabilities for Salt or other SaltStack projects, refer to the SECURITY.md file found in this repository. Join our community Salt is built by the Salt Project community, which includes more than 3,000 contributors working in roles just like yours. This well-known and trusted community works together to improve the underlying technology and extend Salt by creating a variety of execution and state modules to accomplish the most common tasks or solve the most important problems that people in your role are likely to face. If you want to help extend Salt or solve a problem with Salt, you can join our community and contribute today. Please be sure to review our Code of Conduct. Also, check out some of our community resources including: Salt Project Community Discord Salt Project YouTube channel Salt Project Community Notes and Wiki There are lots of ways to get involved in our community. Every month, there are around a dozen opportunities to meet with other contributors and the Salt Core team and collaborate in real time. The best way to keep track is by subscribing to the Salt Project Community Events Calendar on the main https://saltproject.io website. If you have additional questions, email us at saltproject.pdl@broadcom.com or reach out directly to the Community Discord. We'd be glad to have you join our community! License Salt is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. Please see the LICENSE file for the full text of the Apache license, followed by a full summary of the licensing used by external modules. A complete list of attributions and dependencies can be found here: salt/DEPENDENCIES.md
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

1 sources
whiteinge·May 18, 2017Recommendation phrase
It's a common misconception to read too much into Renderers. Salt's State system takes a data structure as input so each of the Renderer modules is really just what flavor of "data structure generator" you like most. The so-called highstate data structure is very stable and well documented so Renders rarely need changes: https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/ref/states/highstate.ht... The regular Python interface you mentioned is my favorite too, when YAML/Jinja aren't a good fit, and people do use it. It's 40 LOC and has only needed 32 commits in the six years it's been around: https://github.com/saltstack/salt/blob/5406a7cdd4729/salt/re... The takeaway is YAML/Jinja generate exactly the same result as the Python Renderer so use what you like.
In DevOps tools review for DataCenter automation: Ansible-StackStorm-SaltStack

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