Anyone also use Ansible?

[csswright]

I'm trying to decide if Chezmoi is right for me. I need tool(s) to quickly restore an environment from a fresh install. For configs, this includes version-controlled dotfiles and system config. At least for everything else, Ansible seems to be the most comprehensive and versatile solution.

I was leaning towards a standard git repo for dotfiles and system config with Ansible doing the templating and copying these files to their locations--it just seems to make sense to let Ansible do something it's fully capable of doing and no additional dependencies necessary.

But I have come across some people use both Chezmoi and Ansible, yet it isn't clear to me where the line is drawn on how much Chezmoi should take over and what advantages it offers over Ansible with regards to dotfiles management since both can do installing and templating. AFAIK Chezmoi can technically manage system config files too but that isn't "officially supported" so I'm curious if anyone who attempted this can comment on whether such a solution is more of a workaround or just as capable as dotfiles management (I'm sure people have attempted this--for the most part I consider dotfiles and system config files to be the same.

Currently, I manage dotfiles with bare git repository and $HOME as worktree approach but I'm starting to realize the there is slight but annoying complexity overhead where some git tools I use doesn't support this "non-standard" setup. There's also the GNU Stow approach that I considered before hearing enough people vouch for Chezmoi (I was particularly hesitant on the dozens of dotfile management tools that mostly wrap around git, tend be very opinionated, and may not support system config files at all).

Any comments are much appreciated.

[twpayne]

See https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions/design/#why-not-use-ansiblechefpuppetsalt-or-similar-to-manage-my-dotfiles-instead.

There are also a few repositories that combine chezmoi and Ansible.

[Lockszmith-GH]

I 'played' with Ansible for a while, for my personal use and machines.

One main difference is the 'statefulness' of chezmoi, it's all about understanding the difference between state.

Compared to other system level tools, it's closer in my mind to terraform than ansible.

For managing applications - I believe Nix is a good way to go, this way you avoid the 'system' side by running locally immutable states of the apps -but I myself am not there, I only now started the journey with Nix (start here if it of interest)

[stCarolas]

I'm using Ansible with Chezmoi 6 years. I use ansible to install system packages (via dnf, npm, cargo and even curl), run some commands like timezonectl set zone,ssh-keygen but I don't use ansible templates at all so all dotfiles managed by chezmoi.
And yes, I use ansible to install chezmoi and run init command.
https://github.com/stCarolas/plays-ansible

Speaking about system configs - if it's mostly systemd services, with ansible you can ship systemd drop-in files. It's better than trying to managing entire systemd-service configuration because that way you would received updates for default configuration. Your additional drop-in files would just override a few target properties.