Feedback wanted: Fedora Formulas

[Seth Vidal]

On Wed, 9 Jan 2013, Bill Nottingham wrote:

> Seth Vidal (skvidal at fedoraproject.org) said:
>>>> One of the big questions to answer is distribution. I can see good
>>>> arguments on the one hand distributing formulas via RPM and on the
>>>> other having an official Git repository for them.
>>>
>>> Yep. I am torn here too. rpms get us a lot, but are also inflexable in
>>> other ways. :)
>>
>> Let me make an argument against rpms here.
>>
>> Ansible doesn't require anything on the local system to run a playbook.
>>
>> That's one of its virtues.
>>
>> For a user if we just use a git repo then the user doesn't have to
>> modify their system in order to use the tools to change their
>> system.
>>
>> There is a certain amount of elegance in that not to mention just
>> not being annoying.
>
> Well, if we're allowing this to be for end-users as opposed to just
> managed infrastructure, it would require *something* to be on the local
> end-user's system, depending on how the playbook is written. (For example,
> if it uses the 'command' or 'shell' features) That can be mitigated by
> having requirements on the playbooks that we accept into this repository,
> of course.
>

1. you don't want to use command/shell modules much - mainly b/c they are 
not idempotent and get run every time barring the presence of the 
creates=option


2. you are correct that if you are using something not commonly on 
systems in a command or shell module you're in trouble. However, you can 
pull those in an early step in the playbook w/o controversy. Playbooks 
don't execute in random order. They are in a strict, obvious order.

does that help?
-sv