5 ms·

As you can see here, the main question is what are the advantages over Ansible, a mature and the most popular agentless configuration management tool written in

by negus 2y ago

As you can see here, the main question is what are the advantages over Ansible, a mature and the most popular agentless configuration management tool written in Python. So I propose putting this answer right to the landing page

Fizzadar 2y ago
I think I tried to shy away from specifically being "Ansible does this bad so pyinfra does this" and instead focus on the features that differentiate like "Instant debugging with realtime stdin/stdout/stderr output (-vvv).". But it seems like that isn't enough and the landing page needs to be more explicit in comparison. Ty for the feedback!
- erikbye 2y ago
  Is performance better than Ansible? I have used Ansible extensively and find it excruciatingly slow.
  - helsinki 2y ago
    Excruciatingly slow is an understatement :)
    - surfingdino 2y ago
      Why being slow is a bad thing? Ansible gives me a legitimate excuse to have proper lunch. ;-)
      - verdverm 2y ago
        You're supposed to be writing compilers during that time
  - Fizzadar 2y ago
    Yes! https://docs.pyinfra.com/en/next/performance.html https://docs.pyinfra.com/en/next/performance.html
    - mxuribe 2y ago
      Hi @Fizzadar and congrats on making this and getting it out the door; kudos! As you craft your "Why this and not Ansible" content, you might actually state clearly what you already noted on the Performance page, namely: "One of the reasons pyinfra was started was performance of agent-less tools at the time." If I read that, it'd instantly make me want to stick around and read some more, play with pyinfra, etc. BTW, i will be playing with it anyway, but just wanted to point out that you likely won;t need to start from scratch for copy (on a comparison or answering "Why this and not Ansible" content). Cheers!
- gh02t 2y ago
  I applaud trying to be positive and focus on "this is what we do well," but yeah at least some explicit comparison would help. The copy right now is kind of assuming the reader already knows Ansible to compare against as a baseline. Which is probably fair for most people who find your project, but people who find your project are also probably not happy with Ansible and want to know if this addresses their pain points immediately. Is very interesting though, I think I'm gonna try it myself.
- Anarch157a 2y ago
  I like Ansible, but that doesn't mean thera are no pain points. One of them is handling "if-this-then-that-else-that". Being purely declarative, Ansible is horrible at that. Pyinfra can be used in imperative mode, am I right? This would make the use of if-else a breeze, which would be a really good reason for me to to switch.
  - tryauuum 2y ago
    Ansible is declarative? In puppet and saltstack you can declare that a folder is empty and declare a specific file in this folder. The system's smart enough to delete all the files except the one. To achieve such feat in ansible is hard. Easiest way is to have two tasks, one deletes everything and second recreates your file. Doesn't feel very declarative Unrelated thing, they don't even try to be declarative in ansible E.g you can have a file with state "touch". It not a state if it updates each playbook run!
    - emmelaich 2y ago
      rsync covers this and should ne used instead of a lot of Ansible tasks
    - Anarch157a 2y ago
      You're confusing declarative with idempotent. Ansible is both, it won't change anything if the state is already what you declared. The nitpicked case you chose, you want the file to have the latest timestamp, this is a valid state to declare.
      - verdverm 2y ago
        The shell task breaks the declarative nature a bit, along with registering task results and then writing conditional whens based on them. Interpolating values based on the registered results does too imho
        aflukasz 2y ago
        Plus, what your are declaring is often times not the state you desire but... action you want to take. Say you use `apt.name: [pkg1, pkg2]`, run it, then remove `pkg2` from the list. Running this again won't remove `pkg2` from your system. So it's declarative, but not necessarily on the optimal level all the times.
- ShakataGaNai 2y ago
  That would be appreciated. I saw the homepage and my first thought was "Ansible is python. How are these things different?" Obviously pure python vs yaml is one thing. But beyond that it's not clear. Perhaps are specific use cases in your mind where one or the other is a better fit, and that would be helpful as well.
ransom1538 2y ago
Stupid question. Ansible is mentioned TWO times in HN hiring thread, it will soon be zero. Isn't this dated tech? Ansible is good at patching servers (have cute names, make sure they are patched). Patching??? But, why not use containers? Aren't we moving away from Ansible/Puppet? I would much rather have AWS/CDK or pythoninfra like this if I was into pet machines.
- jethro_tell 2y ago
  Someone somewhere has to set up machines so you can do containers. Doesn't name an they are pets.
  - ransom1538 2y ago
    You mean terraform?
    - jethro_tell 2y ago
      No, before terraform, someone has to boot a machine and slap an image on it or do an OS install, Register the host in some way and have it checking for the terraform. I use ansible for creating machine images or initial provisioning. (I don't run the ansible, someone racks the host, sets it's build state to install, and boots the host and it joins the appropriate cluster and people do container things. I don't necessarily know when my ansible runs against a host. I also have a pretty good stack of ansible playbooks that I use manually day to day for hardware validation for new server models and one off type stuff. But again, I never really know what I'm running against or have pet servers. A good chunk of hardware validation runs automatically if the boot target is set to hw-validate, but the whole point is that you are gonna find stuff that doesn't work with your standard process and either pass on it or adjust. I do run tf to provision cloud infra so its transparent to the devs, and, honestly, not sure how ansible is dated and tf is not, they are pretty much the same thing in a different coat. And honestly, generating thousands of lines of conflicting generic yaml isn't really much of an improvement over writing it once and running it automatically on 1000s of boxes.

by negus 2y ago

Fizzadar 2y ago

I think I tried to shy away from specifically being "Ansible does this bad so pyinfra does this" and instead focus on the features that differentiate like "Instant debugging with realtime stdin/stdout/stderr output (-vvv).". But it seems like that isn't enough and the landing page needs to be more explicit in comparison. Ty for the feedback!

erikbye 2y ago
Is performance better than Ansible? I have used Ansible extensively and find it excruciatingly slow.
- helsinki 2y ago
  Excruciatingly slow is an understatement :)
  - surfingdino 2y ago
    Why being slow is a bad thing? Ansible gives me a legitimate excuse to have proper lunch. ;-)
    - verdverm 2y ago
      You're supposed to be writing compilers during that time
- Fizzadar 2y ago
  Yes! https://docs.pyinfra.com/en/next/performance.html https://docs.pyinfra.com/en/next/performance.html
  - mxuribe 2y ago
    Hi @Fizzadar and congrats on making this and getting it out the door; kudos! As you craft your "Why this and not Ansible" content, you might actually state clearly what you already noted on the Performance page, namely: "One of the reasons pyinfra was started was performance of agent-less tools at the time." If I read that, it'd instantly make me want to stick around and read some more, play with pyinfra, etc. BTW, i will be playing with it anyway, but just wanted to point out that you likely won;t need to start from scratch for copy (on a comparison or answering "Why this and not Ansible" content). Cheers!
gh02t 2y ago
I applaud trying to be positive and focus on "this is what we do well," but yeah at least some explicit comparison would help. The copy right now is kind of assuming the reader already knows Ansible to compare against as a baseline. Which is probably fair for most people who find your project, but people who find your project are also probably not happy with Ansible and want to know if this addresses their pain points immediately. Is very interesting though, I think I'm gonna try it myself.
Anarch157a 2y ago
I like Ansible, but that doesn't mean thera are no pain points. One of them is handling "if-this-then-that-else-that". Being purely declarative, Ansible is horrible at that. Pyinfra can be used in imperative mode, am I right? This would make the use of if-else a breeze, which would be a really good reason for me to to switch.
- tryauuum 2y ago
  Ansible is declarative? In puppet and saltstack you can declare that a folder is empty and declare a specific file in this folder. The system's smart enough to delete all the files except the one. To achieve such feat in ansible is hard. Easiest way is to have two tasks, one deletes everything and second recreates your file. Doesn't feel very declarative Unrelated thing, they don't even try to be declarative in ansible E.g you can have a file with state "touch". It not a state if it updates each playbook run!
  - emmelaich 2y ago
    rsync covers this and should ne used instead of a lot of Ansible tasks
  - Anarch157a 2y ago
    You're confusing declarative with idempotent. Ansible is both, it won't change anything if the state is already what you declared. The nitpicked case you chose, you want the file to have the latest timestamp, this is a valid state to declare.
    - verdverm 2y ago
      The shell task breaks the declarative nature a bit, along with registering task results and then writing conditional whens based on them. Interpolating values based on the registered results does too imho
      - aflukasz 2y ago
        Plus, what your are declaring is often times not the state you desire but... action you want to take. Say you use `apt.name: [pkg1, pkg2]`, run it, then remove `pkg2` from the list. Running this again won't remove `pkg2` from your system. So it's declarative, but not necessarily on the optimal level all the times.
ShakataGaNai 2y ago
That would be appreciated. I saw the homepage and my first thought was "Ansible is python. How are these things different?" Obviously pure python vs yaml is one thing. But beyond that it's not clear. Perhaps are specific use cases in your mind where one or the other is a better fit, and that would be helpful as well.

ransom1538 2y ago

Stupid question. Ansible is mentioned TWO times in HN hiring thread, it will soon be zero. Isn't this dated tech? Ansible is good at patching servers (have cute names, make sure they are patched). Patching??? But, why not use containers? Aren't we moving away from Ansible/Puppet? I would much rather have AWS/CDK or pythoninfra like this if I was into pet machines.

jethro_tell 2y ago
Someone somewhere has to set up machines so you can do containers. Doesn't name an they are pets.
- ransom1538 2y ago
  You mean terraform?
  - jethro_tell 2y ago
    No, before terraform, someone has to boot a machine and slap an image on it or do an OS install, Register the host in some way and have it checking for the terraform. I use ansible for creating machine images or initial provisioning. (I don't run the ansible, someone racks the host, sets it's build state to install, and boots the host and it joins the appropriate cluster and people do container things. I don't necessarily know when my ansible runs against a host. I also have a pretty good stack of ansible playbooks that I use manually day to day for hardware validation for new server models and one off type stuff. But again, I never really know what I'm running against or have pet servers. A good chunk of hardware validation runs automatically if the boot target is set to hw-validate, but the whole point is that you are gonna find stuff that doesn't work with your standard process and either pass on it or adjust. I do run tf to provision cloud infra so its transparent to the devs, and, honestly, not sure how ansible is dated and tf is not, they are pretty much the same thing in a different coat. And honestly, generating thousands of lines of conflicting generic yaml isn't really much of an improvement over writing it once and running it automatically on 1000s of boxes.