If you can't be bothered to either `pip install` or `docker run` perhaps Ansible is indeed not the tool for you. What's more, I would assert that "reading stuff" is required for any eng in my industry. Here is a list:
* Ansible installation guide (https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/installation_guide/intro_installation.html#installation-guide)
* Ansible Getting Started (https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/intro_getting_started.html)
* the extensive Ansible core module docs (https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/2.9/modules/modules_by_category.html)
And how am I supposed to know it's on pip or docker? The command should be smack dab in the middle of the front page of their site.
Oh and on a default Ubuntu install I have nejither pip nor docker.
If I have to do that much, I might as well not use Ansible and just use my existing bash scripts, which take care of installing pip and docker as well as absolutely everything else. All my existing system setups are just
It's literally on the first page of the docs. I don't see what is so hard about this. Most of these frameworks require some research so that you understand the tool works.
As an aside, I feel such crusty syseng vibes right now. These young folk want it all point and click, apt-get, spotify me. Are you seriously a grown ass human person in the same industry as me and expecting a huge single button install of a configuration management framework? Ever consider you'd have to build a custom image (whether EC2 or docker or whatever) to support your specific environment? If you want to learn Ansible, learn it. Don't think you can just apt-get and accept defaults here. Asserting right now this is an instance where trying a little harder is required.
> It's literally on the first page of the docs. I don't see what is so hard about this.
That is literally the problem. The WHOLE POINT of Ansible is to make things easier. With my bash scripts I don't have to read documentation, so Ansible should beat that, by perhaps making it easier to write the scripts, but HELL NO not by making me have to read documentation. At worst it should be smack dab on the front of the website (like Chrome); at best it should be apt-get/yum/brew install <the obvious name of your product>.
Asking me to Google for and dig through docs is a massive product management fail.
> These young folk want it all point and click, apt-get, spotify me.
Yes, I do. It's because young people wanted to fly and not be stuck on horses that we have planes today. It's because young people wanted to get to the moon that we have so much space tech today. This is 2021, and I want level 5 autonomous software. We're trying to build level 5 autonomus cars, which I don't think we'll get to (we'll get to level 4), but I think a computer should be able to solve dependencies, search for include dirs, and figure out how to run an arbitrary piece of software by now. I think level 5 software installation on vanilla installs of the ten most popular OSes is very achievable.
> expecting a huge single button install of a configuration management framework
Yes, or zero-button. This is 2021, not 1980. Hell, when I had my first computer in the mid 1990s I had single button installs other than having to swap floppies, and any MORE buttons than that is a step backward.
> Ever consider you'd have to build a custom image (whether EC2 or docker or whatever) to support your specific environment?
The computer should be able to figure that out by now. I'm serious. This is 2021 and I have 100 teraflops of compute, 32GB of GPU RAM, 64GB of DDR4 RAM, 1.4 Gbps uplink to the wealth of knowledge on the internet, don't tell me this isn't possible for an advanced installation system to figure out how to fetch and run some software and automatically deal with 95% of the errors that come up in the process.
No I don't, bash is already installed on every system I've had to use, I don't have to waste time figuring out how to install it.
Given a fresh system I can get a non-interactive installation started in 40 seconds flat. If Ansible wants to be competent they need to strive to beat that metric.
Right up until you need to perform some intermediate templating or passing variables from one task to another, yeah, independent bash scripts will do just fine.
> I think a computer should be able to solve dependencies, search for include dirs, and figure out how to run an arbitrary piece of software by now.
Again, I would assert that Ansible is not the tool for you. You want a comprehensive, dependency-mapping, auto everything detection, autoremediation tool. That doesn't exist right now, for various reasons. I don't disagree with your general direction in the least bit, in fact I appreciate your enthusiasm. However, expecting a cow when you don't see a salt lick is a tad foolhardy. I'll explain below.
> Yes, or zero-button
As someone who has been doing this shit a long, long time, I have to say when I hear someone complaining about something not being in apt I immediately note that this person has not once even dipped their toe in isolated package dependencies and versioning. Even with "teraflops of compute" at their disposal.
> Hell, when I had my first computer in the mid 1990s I had single button installs other than having to swap floppies
MS Word is not a configuration management framework.
> We're trying to build level 5 autonomus cars, which I don't think we'll get to (we'll get to level 4), but I think a computer should be able to solve dependencies, search for include dirs, and figure out how to run an arbitrary piece of software by now.
Software exists that can do this, and you most certainly could in Ansible with some fancy lookups and dynamic group_vars, but you would not know how accomplish this without reading the manual, nor do I believe that you should be able to. I believe that understanding the systems you are configuring and dictating precisely how they should be configured, in code, and automating the regular application of those configurations is exactly the best of what's available right now. That goes for Terraform + Ansible, Docker, k8s, whatever.
But while we're on the topic of autonomy, I take extreme umbrage with your analogy of cars to you, as a systems operator, wanting to consume Ansible as a configuration manager. Ansible isn't the car and you're not the driver here. Maybe somewhere between operator and driver. But the notion that you should be able to simply install this and expect it to magically detect everything that you want it to do is a gross misunderstanding of what this tool is and what exactly it does.
Again, something you would have understood if you had read just a little.
Also if I have to use Google to search within your website, you fail at website design, or your in-site search engine is crap.