A Comparative Look at Developer Experience: Scalr, Terraform Cloud, and Spacelift

The developer experience (DevEx) is a significant factor in the selection of an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) management platform. This analysis examines the user interface (UI) and DevEx aspects of Scalr, comparing it with alternatives such as Terraform Cloud and Spacelift. It includes relevant code samples to illustrate interactions with Scalr. The focus is on elements relevant to users searching for "terraform developer experience," "opentofu developer experience," "scalr user interface reviews," or "terraform cloud user interface reviews."

User Interface (UI) & Developer Experience (DevEx): A Comparative Overview

The UI and overall DevEx of an IaC platform influence operational efficiency and user adoption. Scalr's approach to these areas presents several notable characteristics.

1. General UI/DX Overview & Ease of Use

Scalr provides a web UI for managing accounts, environments, workspaces, policies, and runs. Independent reviews, such as those on G2, have noted its initial setup process and the straightforward nature of its day-to-day UI.

A key feature of Scalr is its hierarchical model for organizing resources (account > environments > workspaces). This structure is designed to simplify management at scale by allowing for cascading configurations and policies, which can be intuitive for users familiar with similar organizational structures. Terraform Cloud utilizes organizations and workspaces, while Scalr’s multi-level hierarchy offers a different approach to structuring infrastructure.

Scalr's run dashboards aim to provide visibility into infrastructure changes. In comparison, Spacelift, while offering extensive functionality, has been described by some users as having a steeper learning curve and a UI that can present complexities for certain operations. The Open Policy Agent (OPA) has an inherent learning curve, which is a factor for any platform integrating it, including Scalr and Spacelift. Scalr provides UI features for managing OPA policies.

2. CLI Access

Scalr supports the full Terraform CLI for remote operations directed at the Scalr backend. This allows developers to use standard Terraform commands. Configuration for the Scalr backend in a Terraform project is done via a backend block in a .tf file:

terraform {
  backend "remote" {
    hostname     = "your-account.scalr.io"
    organization = "your-env-id" // Corresponds to Scalr Environment ID

    workspaces {
      name = "your-workspace-name"
    }
  }
}

With this configuration, standard commands like terraform init, terraform plan, and terraform apply will execute against the Scalr platform.

Additionally, Scalr offers its own Scalr CLI (scalr-cli) for programmatic interaction with the Scalr platform. This can be used for tasks such as managing environments, workspaces, and variables.

Here are some example commands for scalr-cli:

List workspaces within a specific environment:

# Replace <YOUR_ENVIRONMENT_ID> with your actual Scalr environment ID
scalr-cli workspaces list --environmentId <YOUR_ENVIRONMENT_ID>

List environments within an account:

# Replace <YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID> with your actual Scalr account ID
scalr-cli environments list --accountId <YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID>

Login to Scalr (typically using a token):

scalr-cli login --token <YOUR_SCALR_API_TOKEN>

Terraform Cloud also integrates with the native Terraform CLI. Spacelift provides a proprietary CLI tool, spacectl, for platform interaction.

3. API Access

Scalr provides a REST API, enabling programmatic access to manage Scalr resources and integrate with other systems like CI/CD pipelines. Interactions with the API can be scripted using tools like curl or any HTTP client library in various programming languages.

For example, to list workspaces in an environment using curl:

# Ensure SCALR_TOKEN and SCALR_HOSTNAME are set as environment variables
# or replace them directly.
# Replace <YOUR_ENVIRONMENT_ID> with your actual Scalr environment ID.
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $SCALR_TOKEN" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/vnd.api+json" \
     "https://$SCALR_HOSTNAME/api/iacp/v3/environments/<YOUR_ENVIRONMENT_ID>/workspaces"

Programmatic interaction using Python with the requests library might look like this:

import requests
import os

scalr_token = os.environ.get("SCALR_TOKEN")
scalr_hostname = os.environ.get("SCALR_HOSTNAME")
environment_id = "<YOUR_ENVIRONMENT_ID>" # Replace with your actual Scalr environment ID

headers = {
    "Authorization": f"Bearer {scalr_token}",
    "Content-Type": "application/vnd.api+json",
}

url = f"https://{scalr_hostname}/api/iacp/v3/environments/{environment_id}/workspaces"

try:
    response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)
    response.raise_for_status() # Raises an HTTPError for bad responses (4XX or 5XX)
    workspaces = response.json()
    for workspace in workspaces.get('data', []):
        print(f"Workspace ID: {workspace['id']}, Name: {workspace['attributes']['name']}")
except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:
    print(f"An API request error occurred: {e}")
except KeyError:
    print("Unexpected API response format.")

Both Terraform Cloud and Spacelift also offer API access to their respective platforms.

4. IDE Integration

Scalr offers a VSCode extension. This extension is designed to allow users to interact with Scalr features, such as viewing workspaces and run statuses, from within the Visual Studio Code environment. This facilitates managing IaC without frequently switching contexts from the code editor. HashiCorp also provides a VSCode extension for Terraform. Other platforms may have community or third-party IDE integrations. The interactions facilitated by such extensions often involve invoking CLI commands or API calls (similar to the examples above) behind the scenes.

Key Scalr Features Relevant to Developer Experience

Based on the points above, Scalr presents the following features impacting the developer experience:

• Hierarchical Resource Model: Organizes infrastructure into accounts, environments, and workspaces.
• Web UI: Designed for managing IaC operations, with user feedback pointing to ease of initial setup and daily use.
• Dual CLI Approach: Supports the native Terraform CLI (with backend configuration) for IaC tasks and a platform-specific Scalr CLI for managing Scalr resources directly.
• REST API: Facilitates automation and integration with external tools and systems.
• VSCode Extension: Allows for interaction with the Scalr platform directly from the VSCode IDE.
• Run Dashboards: Provide visibility into infrastructure deployment and modification processes.

Conclusion

Scalr, Terraform Cloud, and Spacelift each offer distinct features and approaches to managing Infrastructure as Code. Scalr’s platform includes a hierarchical model, a web UI, dual CLI options with examples provided, a REST API illustrated with curl and Python examples, and a VSCode extension. These elements contribute to its overall developer experience. Users evaluating IaC management platforms typically consider such factors, including the nature of CLI and API interactions, in relation to their specific organizational needs and workflow preferences for tools like Terraform and OpenTofu.