sureshjoshi / pantsible

Ansible with an embedded Python interpreter

pantsible

Ansible with an embedded Python Interpreter... Also, this project uses Pants...

Why?

To solve a mildly annoying chicken and egg problem.

When I provision a Mac, I want to use my Ansible playbooks to do it. So I need to install Ansible, but to install Ansible, I need to have pipx installed. To install pipx I need to have homebrew installed.

But I want my Ansible playbook to install homebrew for me.

I could just use the system Python interpreter (which is usually years out of date) to install Ansible to the global site-packages, but I never do that:

export PIP_REQUIRE_VIRTUALENV=true

So, I guess I could create a temp venv, activate it, install Ansible, run my playbook, delete the venv, and then re-install Ansible using either pipx or homebrew.

...

OR, I could take 20 minutes to create this project which bundles Ansible with a Python interpreter - and then curl it down to my Mac and run it.

How to Upgrade Ansible

Update the requirements.txt with the version of interest.

How to Build

• Install Pants
• pants package :pantsible

How to Run

Whether you build the binary it locally, or download it from Releases - you should probably put the binary in a directory on your PATH (e.g. /usr/local/bin, ~/.local/bin, etc) and maybe re-name it if you're so inclined.

Since the Ansible CLI is built up of subcommands (each command is a small Python shim calling the appropriate module), you can't just use the pantsible command other than to use ad-hoc mode.

SCIEs have a built-in mechanism to support multiple commands and that is leveraged here, along with the alias script, to replicate the Ansible CLI. Source the alias script (or add it to your shell profile, or use the long-form command) and you can use ansible, ansible-playbook, ansible-vault, etc.

SCIE_BOOT=vault pantsible encrypt <file>

# after sourcing the alias file

ansible-vault encrypt <file>