git-stack VS Ansible

git-stack is the most complicated, rewriting history, detecting when a branch was squashed, etc

I used to use aliases but got frustrated with them when dealing with PRs depending on PRs, so I wrote git-stack [0]. Thought I'd share in case you'd find it useful

[0] https://github.com/epage/git-stack/blob/main/docs/reference....

For anyone interested, I've been collecting notes on various tools in this space: https://github.com/epage/git-stack/blob/main/docs/comparison... (granted the page doesn't mention git-stack since that is assumed)

Personally, I rebase my PR branches on top of each other, rather than merge. It creates a cleaner history (if your merge policy allows maintaining branch history). Tired of managing these branches, I wrote a tool to help though there are other tools in this space, like git-branchless and graphite.

git-move and git-branchless do some great stuff, I wish this wasn't focused on the performance side to distract from the real value.

What I find useful is not the performance but this line

> For example, it can move entire subtrees, not just branches

The referenced docs mention other great quality of life improvements that streamline standard workflows (e.g. deleting local PR branches when merged into upstream)

When performance does matter is when the rebase operation is a small part of a larger operation. In my related tool, git-stack [0], I rebase all branches on top of their latest upstream branches along with re-arranging and squashing fixup commits and soon other features. When automating entire workflows, having each part be fast is important for the whole to still have decent performance.

[0] https://github.com/epage/git-stack

audit for security audits - Separate from regular CI since it only matters for specific changes or when new critical issues come out.

You might be interested in git-stack that I've previously announced

Could you comment on https://github.com/epage/git-stack/issues/25 for why it helps to iterate to find the last non-conflicting commit to rebase onto?

git-stack is the result of me being tired of annoyances in the PR workflow and trying to improve it, like

Fixing branches off of branches when applying a fixup commit (not implemented yet)

Ansible is an open-source IT automation tool that simplifies application deployment, cloud provisioning, and configuration management across diverse environments. It uses a declarative language to describe the desired state of the system, and then takes the necessary actions to achieve that state. Ansible has become incredibly popular due to its simplicity, agentless architecture, and extensive community support. Document: ansible.com, ansible basics

Ansible v2.16

Ansible is a tool used to help manage software automation processes, configuration management across machines, deployment as well as remote execution of commands and scripts. In sports, Ansible operates as the coach of your team by providing strategies (playbooks), and actions, and ensuring the smooth execution of tasks across your infrastructure, just like a coach guides and directs players (Servers)during a game.

They support for-if from python, too: https://jinja.palletsprojects.com/en/3.1.x/templates/#loop-f... but I haven't tried the "recursive" keyword to know if ansible supports that. I say "ansible supports that" because they don't just drop jinja2 into ansible and call it a draw, they have a bunch of custom execution integrations: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/v2.16.3/lib/ansible/...

To manage a VM, you can use something as simple as just manual actions over SSH, or can use tools like Ansible, Hashicorp's Packer and Terraform or other automations. For an app where there is minimal load and security/reliability concern, VMs are still a great option that provide a lot of value for the buck

In this article's context, it is simply a tool that provides a declarative way to automate your machine/OS to configure the development machine as you want (install package, modify the configuration, etc). Examples of these tools are Ansible, Puppet, etc.

Now we're getting more tangential, but for years, Ansible releases were named for Van Halen songs (see old Changelog here: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/v1.8.4/CHANGELOG.md)

In the lab to follow, we'll quickly provision a 3-node kubeadm cluster (1 master, 2 workers) on the cloud provider of your choice using an automation stack comprised of OpenTofu and Ansible, then deploy Rook Ceph using the official Helm charts and confirm that we are now able to successfully create CSI volume snapshots from PVCs by reusing the MinIO example from our last article.