[bloopernova]

After corporate IT gives out a MacBook, we run a local-only Ansible script I wrote.

It sets .zshrc, .zshenv, and .zshenv-private for tokens etc.

It also uses Homebrew to install a bunch of packages, then creates various config files.

It works well. Developer setup time went from days to less than 2 hours (corporate VPN is slow)

Edited to add:

Workflow is:

  1. Install homebrew, xcode command line tools, Ansible, and then git+credential helper.
  2. Clone repo (which ensures the new dev has correct roles/groups to access the repo)
  3. Run Ansible.

Snippet of the Ansible script:

  ---
  - name: Configure dev macOS
    hosts: localhost
    vars_prompt:
      - name: githubtoken
        prompt: What is your github token?
        private: false

    tasks:
      - name: Create variable from brew prefix
        ansible.builtin.command: "brew --prefix"
        register: brew_prefix
        changed_when: false

      - name: Update Homebrew
        community.general.homebrew:
          update_homebrew: true

      - name: Install GNU Coreutils
        community.general.homebrew:
          name: coreutils
          state: present

[ryan-duve]

I've never used Ansible. Is it worth using for just this workflow? I'm asking coming from a baseline of just having a Git-versioned shell script which has lines like

    brew install coreutils

and whathaveyou.

[bloopernova]

You get the nice stuff that Ansible brings, like adding specific lines to .zshrc, templates, etc. I found it easier than my usually-beloved shell scripts because I didn't need to think about the mechanism, just the result.

For example, brew install coreutils would use the community.general.homebrew module: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/communit... <-- you can see from that page that each module has lots of examples, which makes it pretty easy to go from requirements to Ansible script.

[pushcx]

You have to think about the mechanism if you remove a file. Ansible is imperative like a shell script, not declarative.