2024-11-03 · Ravi Menon

Dry Runs Before You Touch Production Cron

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Cron is simple until it is not. We teach a dry-run contract: every destructive path checks a boolean, prints the would-do list, and exits non-zero if someone forgets the flag. That pattern shows up across CLI Automation Starter and Ops Scripting. Shadow directories matter when renames span thousands of files. Write to a parallel tree, diff sizes and hashes, then swap. Ops reviewers can eyeball a summary table instead of tailing a live log during business hours. Pair dry runs with a rollback note—even if rollback is manual. Mentors grade the note for specificity: who runs it, how long it takes, and what telemetry proves success. Vague rollback plans fail review, which is the point.

Tags: safety, ops, python