What can we learn from Ansible

[Jacek Bzdak]

I invested some time in provisioning something using ansible, whole experience was awful (I;ll be rewriting this in provy soon), but they have some very nice abstractions, and features that provy is lacking.

Anyways, here is the list:

• Parallel provisioning --- I can provision many servers in parallel, provisioning of each server stops on first error, but the whole process ends when each server was provisioned (either succesfully, or with error)
• You can easily say: "the next block of code will be performed as user: foo".
• You can provision servers without root access (if you don't need it to do your tasks)
  
• You can switch SSH connection during execution, so you can:
  
• Perform some code user sudo-user, then login as low privelege user and work from there.
  
• Perform some code (like setting up webserver on machine A) re-login to cache server B and do something, and then configure cache server connection on machine A.
  
• They have proper context, which is different from provy context in following respects:
• It is well documented, and you are forced to use it.
  
• Almost configuration of provisioned cluster is in this context
  
• It is empty unless you put something inside

Why provy is much better for me:

• Debugging is much easier --- you just launch provy under debugger and can see what is sent to the other side.
  
• Extending provy is much easier
• Code is much more readable!!!
  
• Writing complex provisioning code is much easier
• Writing if in python is much easier than using ansible expressions (that suck like hell).
  
• It just works.
  

[Bernardo Heynemann]

Thanks a lot for the compliments on provy.

The suggestions you make for improving provy make a LOT of sense. Do you mind creating tickets for those in a way that we can track our progress? It would be helpful if you could also explain each in more detail in the tickets.

I know this is tedious since you already sent the e-mail, but I'm worried if I just create tickets for each of those things I might miss some context or important information that you might have.

If you want to contribute to provy it would be even greater. We are a little short of developers now with Diogo Baeder doing most of the heavy lifting. It's always great to have someone else aboard helping out.

Thanks again for your interest in provy and I hope we can work together to make it even greater. :)

Cheers,

Bernardo Heynemann

Bernardo Heynemann
Developer @ globo.com

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[Jacek Bzdak]

Hi Bernardo,

I'll do as you say -- I'll make issues for this.