If a user wanted to do a diff for multiple config files to multiple servers: There are only two places where this makes sense... when you are currently looking at multiple servers (SSM) or when you are looking at mulitple files (config channels pages). In the SSM we do support choosing multiple files to multiple servers. In the channels pages we don't. However, on the Channel Overview page, there is a link to diff all files to all systems. There is simply no way to do less than that. Possible Solutions: 1. Leave things the way they are; the all to all functionality is just special. 2. Remove the all to all functionality from channel. The ssm is *the* way to do this. 3. Add the pages to config channel for scheduling diff actions (this bug should probably be pushed to a different release).
I think #1 is fine. It gives users a one-click shortcut to verifying all the files on the systems subscribed to the channel. While a UI to schedule diffs from a channel is an interesting idea, I think the primary usecase for diffing would be what we currently handle - diff all files in the channel against all systems subscribed to the channel. If a user wanted a finer-grained section of files against all of those systems, they could just ignore the files they didn't care about in the diff results. If they only wanted diff results for multiple systems for one or a small number of files, they can easily schedule those from the files themselves. I'm going to close this NOTABUG. If it turns out to be something customers end up wanting to use, I think we should reopen this bug a reevaluate Ken's suggestion #3.