Ansible is an open source automation tool developed by Red Hat, primarily used by DevOps teams to manage servers.

Simply, it automates repetitive tasks, making your life as a developer much easier.

In this blog post series, we will explore how to use Ansible to set up your development development environment. We'll start with the basics of Ansible and then dive into automating the management of tools and configurations.

But why should you care about this? Imagine this scenario: you need to switch to a new computer or replicate your exact development environment across your work and personal machines. Starting from scratch every time can be time-consuming and error-prone. You might create a manual task list and execute each step whenever needed. This is where automation tools like Ansible shine. Ansible reduces manual effort and streamlines these processes.

Installation

Follow the steps provided in the official installation guide or use the following commands.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ansible/ansible
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ansible

Inventory

Inventory is a list of managed nodes or host.

Here's an example inventory.ini file:

[all]
127.0.0.1 ansible_connection=local

In this file, [all] is the host group name, and 127.0.0.1 ansible_connection=local represents the local machine.

Variables

Variables are stored in files and can be used within Ansible playbooks to manage data dynamically during task execution.

For instance, you can have a default.config.yml file with content like:

print_message: "Hello Ansible!"

Configuration

The configuration file allows you to set various parameters that govern how Ansible behaves when running tasks.

In an ansible.cfg file, you can configure settings like this:

[defaults]
inventory = inventory.ini

Tasks

Tasks are the fundamental units of work defined in a playbook. They are the building blocks of Ansible automation.

Here's an example task defined in a tasks/echo.yml file:

- name: Print Message
  command: echo {{ print_message }}
  register: echo_result # Capture the output

- name: Display the result
  debug:
    var: echo_result.stdout

This task will print print_message value set in default.config.yml and capture the output for display.

Playbooks

A playbook is a file that defines a series of tasks to be executed on targeted hosts. Playbooks are at the core of Ansible automation.

Here's an example playbook.yml file:

- name: Configure host
  hosts: all

  vars_files:
    - default.config.yml
 
  tasks:
    - import_tasks: tasks/echo.yml

To run this playbook, use the following command:

ansible-playbook playbook.yml