Re:Ansible Techniques I Wish I’d Known Earlier
by quadrifoliate on Friday August 27, 2021 @06:05PM
(#28333471)
> >bash and python
> Neither of those of idempotent.
There is nothing magical about Ansible that makes it idempotent by default either.
The simple stuff like having specific versions of a package installed that you might be thinking of is just using Python under the hood. If you get into more complicated stuff, especially around custom infrastructure abstractions you use internally, guess what, you will have to write a bunch of Python and effectively call it from Ansible. And you will have to put in extra effort to make sure it's idempotent.
At which point you start thinking...why not just write a Python script instead? At least that gives you all of the flexibility.
> Neither of those of idempotent.
There is nothing magical about Ansible that makes it idempotent by default either.
The simple stuff like having specific versions of a package installed that you might be thinking of is just using Python under the hood. If you get into more complicated stuff, especially around custom infrastructure abstractions you use internally, guess what, you will have to write a bunch of Python and effectively call it from Ansible. And you will have to put in extra effort to make sure it's idempotent.
At which point you start thinking...why not just write a Python script instead? At least that gives you all of the flexibility.