Vassilis Simeonidis

This list is a companion to my article Learning Through the Web: Lessons Learned As mentioned in the article, during the learning period I get through, I try to read a relevant book and spot the things I missed on the web. This list is exactly this for ansible. The book read is Ansible Up and Running [1] Firstly something that comes handy, you can make your Ansible playbooks executable using shebang by adding #! /usr/bin/env ansible-playbook at the beginning of the file It is a good practice to keep files and jinja templates on separate directories (/files, /templates) because during the execution of each respective task, (file or template) ansible will check those directories first, either it is in a role or simply a playbook Handlers in ansible run only on changed task status, not always default/main.yml variables are meant to be overridden whereas vars/main.yml are not You can define dependencies between roles You can pass roles variables using the following syntax roles: - { role:...

Disclaimer: The subject discussed below is based on my personal experience with software tools in a humorous aspect. It is not meant to be approached as “the correct approach”, it’s something that I find useful. Working as a software engineer I have encountered a plethora of problems that require different tools per case. Obviously there is no chance of knowing every tool you are going to use, especially early on, on your career. And since computer specialists double in numbers every 5 years, based on Clean Coders, My lawn article [1], every day makes this case more relevant. With such a rate of growth, learning new tools and methodologies becomes an industry problem When I begin to use a new, to you, tool, the cycle goes like the following: A new need appears You think of and (maybe) look for the best tools available You select one or a combination of them based on your needs and taste Then you start googling the required setup Once you have the required setup in place, you start to p...