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I could just use the system Python interpreter (which is usually years out of date) to install Ansible to the global site-packages, but I never do that: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 must select one. Running the bare pantsible will net you:

% pantsible
Error: Could not determine which command to run.

Ansible with an embedded Python interpreter.

Please select from the following boot commands:

ansible
ansible-config
ansible-console
ansible-doc
ansible-galaxy
ansible-inventory
ansible-playbook
ansible-pull
ansible-vault

You can select a boot command by setting the SCIE_BOOT environment variable or else by passing it as the 1st argument.

In other words, pantsible is a BusyBox; so you need to structure commands like:

pantsible ansible-vault encrypt <file>

# or, more verbosely:

SCIE_BOOT=ansible-vault pantsible encrypt <file>

Neither of these approachs is very appealing. Instead, you can one-time install aliases for all the subcommands with SCIE=install pantsible --symlink DEST_DIR, where DEST_DIR can be any element of your PATH you desire (e.g. /usr/local/bin, ~/.local/bin, etc...). See SCIE=help pantsible for more info.

After installing the symlinks, we've replicated the Ansible CLI and you can use the regular commands:

ansible --version
ansible-playbook --version
ansible-vault --version
...