I took a few days off after Christmas, but I cannot really stop tinkering with computers at large, so I returned to play with knife. I really like it, but have a few wishes, in no particular order, which I hope to see fulfilled.

• I’d like the ssh subcommand optionally made use of known_hosts.

  In an ever changing environment, like a cloud, it would probably be a hassle, but over the years I’ve appreciated this checking of the hosts’ keys at least a couple of time and in a more stable environment I really cannot think about living without it.

• I’d like more things could be specified inside the configuration file (e.g., SSH username and identity files, EC2 region, etc.).

  I like the subcommands’ great flexibility, but for daily use with homogeneously configured machines, I’d rather if most of those connection/identity/service related options could be written once and for all, with CLI flag taking precedence.

• I’d like knife itself were a separate gem, depending on Chef, the various SSH gems and fog.

  Granted, you don’t need knife on every machine, but keeping track of what it needs just in case you have to use it somewhere else, is a (really small) nuisance.

One more thing… Happy New Year!