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ssddanbrown 5 hours ago

I've been using PyInfra for a while, albeit just for simple automation (Updating systems, checking certain stats) and I'm a big fan. Compared to Ansible, I found the docs, syntax and usage patterns much easier to get on with. Might just be a preference thing, but I always had trouble going through the Ansible docs.

Ran into some bugs, like one machine that seems to cause errors and mess up the output on restart, although that looks like it might have been addressed in this release.

If it helps, I put together a video when initially exploring PyInfra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-_0RiFnKEs

wowi42 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Glad it clicked. The Ansible vs PyInfra docs gap isn't really preference, YAML plus Jinja plus a custom DSL is just more cognitive load than plain Python with type hints. Once you can grep the source and read it like normal code, going back feels rough. On the restart bug: if it resurfaces, an issue on GitHub with the OS, connector (ssh/local/docker), and raw output would help a lot. The 3.x line cleaned up a bunch around connection handling and output buffering, so there's a decent chance it's already fixed. Thanks for the video, will watch. Hands-on intro content is exactly what the project needs more of.

catdog an hour ago | parent [-]

Really need to try PyInfra, the concept sounds nice.

You don't have to do crazy things with Ansible for that yaml DSL becoming the opposite of helpful. Things which would be quite straightforward to express in code become quite cumbersome, hard to understand and hard to debug. Also Jinja is often a horrible choice (you don't have in Ansible). Also Ansible excessively requires it in places where you want proper types and not just a string.