3 ms·

Hiera for Ansible, sort of. An Ansible lookup plugin for Jerakia

2 points by crayfishx 9y ago

Thought I'd share this in the hope of getting some feedback, this is still fairly embryonic but this Ansible lookup plugin performs data lookups against Jerakia, a flexible hierarchical data lookup tool that also integrates into Puppet/Hiera. More about Jerakia can be found at http://jerakia.io Any feedback on the Ansible lookup plugin would be awesome, you can grab it at: http://github.com/crayfishx/ansible-jerakia

warrenm 9y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14972540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14972540
dozzie 9y ago
It would help the project greatly if there was a description what Jerakia actually is, what data it can (is intended to) store, and how/where one would want to use it, instead of merely comparing it to Puppet's Hiera. If somebody has never used Hiera, he wouldn't guess what Jerakia is about. Also, don't call your Ruby API a domain specific language. It's not, it's just Ruby, which is a generic prorgamming language.
- crayfishx 9y ago
  Are you referring to how I described it in this post, or how it's described on the GitHub site or the main jerakia.io site? I admit coming from a heavy Puppet background I've been guilty of explaining things as if my entire audience understands Puppet, and thats something I've been trying to stop doing :-) - There are docs on http://jerakia.io/basics/lookups/ http://jerakia.io/basics/lookups/ that try to explain the concepts a little more generically. If they are hard to understand, the doc site can be contributed to directly :-). As for Ruby DSL / Ruby - I guess you're maybe right, "DSL" is kind of an improperly used term these days... although it's debatable IMO
  - dozzie 9y ago
    > Are you referring to how I described it in this post, or how it's described on the GitHub site or the main jerakia.io site? Both, but README in repository (and front of the homepage) is more important. > As for Ruby DSL / Ruby - I guess you're maybe right, "DSL" is kind of an improperly used term these days... Mainly among Ruby crowd. > although it's debatable IMO It's like you were arguing that by adding a few new nouns and verbs you invented whole language. In informal, colloquial speech there is this notion of e.g. "scientific language", but it doesn't make it a new language.
    - crayfishx 9y ago
      > > Are you referring to how I described it in this post, or how it's described on the GitHub site or the main jerakia.io site? > Both, but README in repository (and front of the homepage) is more important. So the README doesn't actually mention Hiera or Puppet at all :-) - I guess what you're saying is that I need to explain the use case in more detail?
    - crayfishx 9y ago
      I appreciate the feedback re the docs - I've been burried deep in this stuff for years and it's sometimes an easy mistake to make writing docs with the assumption the audience understands the basics.... I'll update the README shortly, I'm also working on a blog post for the Ansible lookup integration where I'm trying really hard to think like a person who has no idea what hierarchical lookups are or why you would want them - so thanks for the extra feedback here.

2 points by crayfishx 9y ago

warrenm 9y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14972540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14972540

dozzie 9y ago

It would help the project greatly if there was a description what Jerakia actually is, what data it can (is intended to) store, and how/where one would want to use it, instead of merely comparing it to Puppet's Hiera. If somebody has never used Hiera, he wouldn't guess what Jerakia is about. Also, don't call your Ruby API a domain specific language. It's not, it's just Ruby, which is a generic prorgamming language.

crayfishx 9y ago
Are you referring to how I described it in this post, or how it's described on the GitHub site or the main jerakia.io site? I admit coming from a heavy Puppet background I've been guilty of explaining things as if my entire audience understands Puppet, and thats something I've been trying to stop doing :-) - There are docs on http://jerakia.io/basics/lookups/ http://jerakia.io/basics/lookups/ that try to explain the concepts a little more generically. If they are hard to understand, the doc site can be contributed to directly :-). As for Ruby DSL / Ruby - I guess you're maybe right, "DSL" is kind of an improperly used term these days... although it's debatable IMO
- dozzie 9y ago
  > Are you referring to how I described it in this post, or how it's described on the GitHub site or the main jerakia.io site? Both, but README in repository (and front of the homepage) is more important. > As for Ruby DSL / Ruby - I guess you're maybe right, "DSL" is kind of an improperly used term these days... Mainly among Ruby crowd. > although it's debatable IMO It's like you were arguing that by adding a few new nouns and verbs you invented whole language. In informal, colloquial speech there is this notion of e.g. "scientific language", but it doesn't make it a new language.
  - crayfishx 9y ago
    > > Are you referring to how I described it in this post, or how it's described on the GitHub site or the main jerakia.io site? > Both, but README in repository (and front of the homepage) is more important. So the README doesn't actually mention Hiera or Puppet at all :-) - I guess what you're saying is that I need to explain the use case in more detail?
  - crayfishx 9y ago
    I appreciate the feedback re the docs - I've been burried deep in this stuff for years and it's sometimes an easy mistake to make writing docs with the assumption the audience understands the basics.... I'll update the README shortly, I'm also working on a blog post for the Ansible lookup integration where I'm trying really hard to think like a person who has no idea what hierarchical lookups are or why you would want them - so thanks for the extra feedback here.