Philosophical Question: To contribute or not to contribute

Archives Ansible Developer
1

Hi All,

To contribute or not to contribute? I have to (no choice) integrate an SCM front-end product into Ansible that performs some very platform-specific installation and activation tasks that do not have general applicability across platforms. My general sense is to develop this following recommended conventions, but not initially contributing it. I expect, perhaps a grand total of 50 playbooks (at customers) might be developed to use this in the next 3 years or so. Still, the customers I have who want to do this are important and I must service them. I am contemplating a plugin for the common functions (maybe 250-ish) and individual modules for each main operation. There are about 10-ish of those at present with significantly different parameters in each, other than a common set of about 5 or 6. Is it logical to manage all of this as drops-in for my customers for now and consider contributing to Ansible at some time in the future of the the target community exceeds my estimates?

Thanks,
Randall

2

Hi All,

To contribute or not to contribute? I have to (no choice) integrate an SCM front-end product into Ansible that performs some very platform-specific installation and activation tasks that do not have general applicability across platforms. My general sense is to develop this following recommended conventions, but not initially contributing it. I expect, perhaps a grand total of 50 playbooks (at customers) might be developed to use this in the next 3 years or so. Still, the customers I have who want to do this are important and I must service them. I am contemplating a plugin for the common functions (maybe 250-ish) and individual modules for each main operation. There are about 10-ish of those at present with significantly different parameters in each, other than a common set of about 5 or 6. Is it logical to manage all of this as drops-in for my customers for now and consider contributing to Ansible at some time in the future of the the target community exceeds my estimates?

Based on the information provided, I think this is a great candidate
for creating a Role (or many Roles) since roles can carry their own
modules, module_utils, plugins, etc and hosting it (them?) on
Galaxy[0] for the community to easily discover, make use of, and
(hopefully) contribute back to.

-AdamM

[0] - https://galaxy.ansible.com/