LGV_MeetingServer VS uplaybook

I find “self-documentation” often doesn’t actually work. It’s great in theory, but often falls down, in practice.

I often need to preface my config stuff with fairly substantial comment blocks that discuss the reasoning behind the configuration.

Here’s an example: https://github.com/LittleGreenViper/LGV_MeetingServer/blob/m...

I generally have a “What Problem Does This Solve?” section in my READMEs.

https://github.com/LittleGreenViper/LGV_TZ_Lookup#what-probl...

https://github.com/LittleGreenViper/LGV_MeetingServer#what-p...

https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_Spinner#what-probl...

https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_BlueThoth#what-pro...

https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_PersistentPrefs#wh...

etc.

IMHO, the issue is that Ansible uses YAML to do "programming language" sorts of things, which is why it feels so unnatural.

I tried an experiment last year: What if Ansible had Python rather than YAML syntax. https://github.com/linsomniac/uplaybook?tab=readme-ov-file#s...

The downside is that having full Python available makes it really easy to make your playbooks non-idempotent, which Ansible gate-keeps behind Ansible modules. Also someone raised a concern that full Python (rather than a more limited safe dialect like Starlark) would make it harder to trust third-party playbooks. But considering uPlaybook's use case (ansible-like system configuration) it feels like even with a restricted dialect it is going to have plenty of opportunity for nefarious purposes.

I've put out uPlaybook for some limited review among my friends, and I've gotten some excitement about it. It doesn't have fleet management and remote running though, which is the big negative feedback I've gotten. I'm interested in thoughts on it though.

Ansible convinced me that doing programming tasks in YAML is insanity, so I started an experiment: What would Ansible be like if it's syntax were more like Python than YAML. https://github.com/linsomniac/uplaybook

I spent around 3 months over the holidays exploring that by implementing a "micro Ansible", I have a pretty solid tool that implements it, but haven't had much "seat time" with it: working on it rather than in it. But what I've done has convinced me that there are some benefits.

uPlaybook2: https://github.com/linsomniac/uplaybook2

This is a python-syntax re-imagining of Ansible / Cookiecutter: declarative IT automation and project templating. It's fairly early, but the heart of it is there: I'm able to create files/directories and render templates, running it displays status, I have most of the "magic" implemented that makes it less like Python and more like Ansible. The CLI entry-point is minimal, I need to basically forklift over the uPlaybook1 argument handling code and playbook search/selection.

Would love feedback from someone who is familiar with Python and Ansible about the direction of the YAML -> Python for playbook syntax, but I worry that it's too early to even give that.

Basically it's uPlaybook (v1) but with the Ansible-inspired YAML playbooks reimagined as Python: https://github.com/linsomniac/uplaybook

Agreed, I do a lot of Ansible, and it took me a while up front, but I've become pretty accustomed to YAML. Though I still struggle with completely groking some of the syntax. But, I recently took a more serious look at TOML and felt like it'd be a bear for Ansible.

A few months ago I made a "mini ansible / cookie cutter" ( https://github.com/linsomniac/uplaybook ), and it uses YAML syntax. I made a few modifications to Ansible syntax, largely around conditionals and loops. For YAML, I guess I like the syntax, but I've been feeling like there's got to be a better way.

I kind of want a shell syntax, but with the ansible command semantics (declarative, --check / --diff, notify) and the templating and encryption of arguments / files.

This is exactly my current experiment on a personal project I'm working on, though I'm trying to create a Textual UI on a dynamic Python argparse CLI. Creating a Textual UI is non-trivial.

My tool uPlaybook[0] is kind of a CookieCutter [1] / Ansible [2] mashup, and the playbooks typically would have a number of "slots" you can configure to control the templating, like project name, license, if you want to "git init", that sort of thing.

It currently auto-generates a argparse interface, or it can interactively ask you those questions. But I've been working on a Textual UI as well. I chose argparse over Click largely because I want to work with minimal dependencies, and the Textual UI would be an optional dependency.

Going to have to check this guy out.

[0] https://github.com/linsomniac/uplaybook