Show HN: Aviary.sh – A tiny Bash alternative to Ansible

Re:Show HN: Aviary.sh – A tiny Bash alternative to Ansible by ThePhysicist on Thursday June 25, 2020 @03:10PM (#23644313)

Ha, Ansible parses and 'executes' YAML files using Python, but not before passing them (repeatedly?) through a template library (Jinja2) originally designed to produce HTML pages. They even came up with a way to write for loops in YAML... What I'm trying to say is that sometimes great software is written using (in some people's opinion) terrible technology. Not everything needs to be written in idiomatic Haskell or Rust.

Personally I have to say that I started writing more bash scripts again recently, I even wrote one that interfaces with the GPIO ports on a Raspberry Pi. Works like a charm, is concise and (I find) also quite readable: https://gist.github.com/adewes/7a4c20a5a7379e19d78ba54521d3d...

But then again I'm also a person who enjoys Perl, so maybe it is time for me to be banished to a lonely island :D

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Aviary.sh – A tiny Bash alternative to Ansible by the_mitsuhiko on Thursday June 25, 2020 @03:32PM (#23644568)

> originally designed to produce HTML pages

Jinja2 can produce HTML pages, but it was never exclusively designed for that. In fact one of the earliest uses of Jinja2 was generating LaTeX.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Aviary.sh – A tiny Bash alternative to Ansible by ThePhysicist on Thursday June 25, 2020 @03:49PM (#23644767)

I stand corrected, didn't know that!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Aviary.sh – A tiny Bash alternative to Ansible by lux on Thursday June 25, 2020 @03:26PM (#23644496)

Perl was great for encouraging that kind of thinking with the old motto "there's more than one way to do it". I'm glad I started with Perl because it's helped me think about solutions I may have otherwise dismissed.

Bash is far from perfect, but it's readily available at many people's fingertips, and it gets you to some solutions really fast. This is cool.

[ Parent | on HN ]