4 ms·

disclaimer: author of project here. Achieving a middle ground was one of the points of creating the project -- making configuration tools more accessible to e

disclaimer: author of project here. Achieving a middle ground was one of the points of creating the project -- making configuration tools more accessible to everybody, that you can forget and come back to in six months and still know how to work with. I definitely would be interested in your feedback after your trying things, but I think that's exactly the point Matt was trying to make in the article.

agentultra 13y ago
Well the proof of the pudding is in the tasting... I will have to give it a whirl I suppose. Chef/puppet/etc seem easy on the surface when you're getting your feet wet. I find that the complexity monster rears its head when you have to start supporting multiple OSs and combinations of configuration options. Shell scripts fail in this area too but it's generally much easier to find the problem than a morass of metadata files, recipes, and specifications. I would be more than happy to provide feedback (being the curmudgeon that I tend to be). I appreciate attempts at reducing complexity. I've been meaning to look into Marelle a bit (http://larsyencken.github.io/marelle/ http://larsyencken.github.io/marelle/) as I find logic programming and CBS to be where CMs should be heading. Is Ansible somewhere along that spectrum?
- mpdehaan2 13y ago
  Ansible doesn't seek to be programming, so my guess is no. I generally am not a fan of that syntax and would disagree that that is the way most administrators and developers brains work -- but I guess I can see it for some who do think that way. Multiple OSes are pretty straightforward though. Look at the 'group_by' module for dynamically carving up machines based on operating system, and things like the 'when' statement for introducing conditional behavior. Variables can also be overriden based on groups, so you can define defaults in one group and then have different settings in other groups.

agentultra 13y ago

Well the proof of the pudding is in the tasting... I will have to give it a whirl I suppose. Chef/puppet/etc seem easy on the surface when you're getting your feet wet. I find that the complexity monster rears its head when you have to start supporting multiple OSs and combinations of configuration options. Shell scripts fail in this area too but it's generally much easier to find the problem than a morass of metadata files, recipes, and specifications. I would be more than happy to provide feedback (being the curmudgeon that I tend to be). I appreciate attempts at reducing complexity. I've been meaning to look into Marelle a bit (http://larsyencken.github.io/marelle/ http://larsyencken.github.io/marelle/) as I find logic programming and CBS to be where CMs should be heading. Is Ansible somewhere along that spectrum?

mpdehaan2 13y ago
Ansible doesn't seek to be programming, so my guess is no. I generally am not a fan of that syntax and would disagree that that is the way most administrators and developers brains work -- but I guess I can see it for some who do think that way. Multiple OSes are pretty straightforward though. Look at the 'group_by' module for dynamically carving up machines based on operating system, and things like the 'when' statement for introducing conditional behavior. Variables can also be overriden based on groups, so you can define defaults in one group and then have different settings in other groups.