Core concepts

The following terminology is used throughout Unobin.

Factory

A factory is the compiled executable produced from a factory.ub. It contains the Unobin runtime, library dependencies, and the factory body.

Stack

A stack is one managed instance of a factory. One factory can manage multiple stacks. The stack file defines the state backend, encryption key source, and factory inputs.

Category

A category is an action, data source, or resource.

An action does imperative tasks and optionally returns output.

A data source does readonly lookups of external sources and returns output.

A resource does full CRUD operations on cloud or other external sources.

Kind

A kind is a library's implementation of a category.

In the following example, iam-openid-connect-provider is a data source kind in the aws library.

data-sources: {
  github: aws.iam-openid-connect-provider {
    url: input.oidc-provider-url
  }
}

Composite

A composite kind is written in .ub, as opposed to primitive kinds, which are written in Go. Composites combine other kinds behind a declared input and output interface.

Asset

An asset is a regular file or directory captured when a factory is compiled. Assets are static values, not categories or kinds. They do not create dependency graph nodes, have lifecycle operations, or create state entries.

An asset belongs to the factory or composite body that declares it. The compiled factory contains its bytes and does not need the original source path at runtime.

Library

A library can be imported and provides kinds and functions.

A library written in .ub always provides composite kinds. A Go library implements primitive kinds and functions. Functions can only be written in Go.

Project

A project is the versioned dependency unit inside a git repository. A repository root can be a project, and a subdirectory can also be a project if it has its own project.ub or go.mod.

project.ub defines direct dependency requirements and local replacements.

project-lock.ub defines the selected dependency set used by compile.

State backend and encryption

State is stored in a backend and is encrypted. The configuration for state backends and encryption is done in the stack file. Plan files are also encrypted using the same encryption configuration.