Re: [ansible-project] Suggestions for organization of small project

[Michael DeHaan]

Please do not cross-post.

On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 12:44 PM, <wum...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, this is going to be a cross post to both ansible and salt user groups. I've spent the last few months going through the docs for both projects and I know both fairly well. In both cases, the major issue I've stumbled against is the organization of projects. I've decided to go back to square one, and have set myself a task of converting some simple shell scripts I currently use into both ansible and salt to see which tool fits my method of working better. I'm looking for top level opinions on how to achieve the following tasks:

1 - copy across certain dotfiles to certain boxes (and template some of them) dependent upon the following:

 * box OS (and version if you're feeling ambitious)

 * box "purpose" - an arbitrary purpose defined by me - e.g. "private", "desktop", "router" etc. Boxes may have multiple "purposes".

2 - install the correct packages and start services based upon box "purpose". Package-name/service-name will obviously change depending on OS, so there will need to be a way to keep track of that.

In other words there will ideally be the following dicts (though I realise this is not necessarily possible in practice):

* hosts -> list of purposes

* purpose -> list of packages

* package -> OS-package-name

* purpose -> list of dotfiles

Remember that some of the dotfiles will need to be templated depending on the purpose(s) of the box, as well as the OS.

I'm not asking people to do the work for me and I don't need any code, just an abstract overview of how you would implement this scenario following "best practices". The idea is to keep the configuration as neat and simple as possible, but also flexible enough to be easily extended. By "neat and simple" I mean there should preferably be no duplication of work (e.g. changing multiple lists in the same way to add a package). By "easily extended" I mean that additional functionality (such as having dotfiles for multiple users) should be fairly straightforward to implement and not involve a complete reorganisation of the config.

Feel free to use the relevant jargon for the software, but I'd prefer it if you stuck to core functionality (no hacks/python). 

I'm not going to explain methods I've already looked at as it will only confuse the discussion, but suffice to say there are multiple ways to achieve the above scenario in both salt and ansible. I know how it can be done, I want to know the way you'd do it based upon your experience.

Flamewars not appreciated. Both tools are extremely capable, but have different methodologies. I just want to know which fits my own way of thinking better.

Thanks for any suggestions

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