[activatedgeek]

I current use Ansible to setup both local and remote hosts. I've been very happy with it, and love that Pyinfra intends to support the Ansible connector.

My main gripe with Ansible is the YAML specification. Ansible chooses to separate the task specification and task execution. Pyinfra chooses to directly expose the Python layer, instead of using slightly ugly magic functions/variables. I like this approach more since it allows standard Pythonic control flow instead of using a new (arguably ugly and more hassle to maintain) grammar.

Excited for Pyinfra!

[WesolyKubeczek]

I'm only using Ansible because of its extensive documentation and mindshare, but my best successes with it were when I let go of the idea that the playbooks specify state "declaratively". I now treat them as imperative steps where each step is being checked as to whether it needs to be done or not, and it has vastly simplified my mental model of what Ansible is actually doing.

[letmeinhere]

I think of ansible as a declarative-imperative lasagna, where each playbook is a desired state, achieved by an imperative sequence of plays, which themselves are desired states, achieved by a sequence of roles, which have the same properties, and then tasks too below that, finally resolving to plain old imperative Python.

It's all pretty messy but useful.

[polski-g]

My biggest problem with Ansible is the YAML, doing anything with loops is horrendous & trying to mangle nested variable types requires a StackOverflow post every time.

A few years ago, I found a library that lets you utilize Ansible's tasks in raw Python, without the huge hassle of using the Ansible Python API. I cannot find it again however. But PyInfra looks great.

[Fizzadar]

This alone is the entire reason I started working on pyinfra, loops in YAML is just evil.

[movedx]

But you can just write a small module in Python, have it do the looping logic for you, install it at the root of your project's configuration-as-code repository, and then use the module in the YAML, removing the need to do complex, ugly loops in YAML.

Is there a reason this isn't an option for you?

[nijave]

Real Python instead of templating (Jinja in YAML) would be nice.

In Ansible, it's fairly arduous to try to reshape data from command outputs into structures that can be used in loops in other tasks--especially if you want to merge output from multiple commands. Main usecase is more dynamic playbooks where you combine state from multiple systems to create a new piece of infrastructure.

I think templating yaml or templates inside yaml is a bit of an anti pattern.