Ansible vs Apache Ant

Overview

Ansible

Stacks19.5K

Followers15.6K

Votes1.3K

GitHub Stars66.9K

Forks24.1K

Apache Ant

Stacks250

Followers151

Votes7

GitHub Stars449

Forks449

Ansible vs Apache Ant: What are the differences?

Execution Method: The key difference between Ansible and Apache Ant lies in their execution methods. Ansible follows a push-based model, where the control machine pushes tasks and commands to be executed on remote hosts. On the other hand, Apache Ant uses a pull-based model, where the build file is executed on the control machine, pulling the required tasks and targets for execution.
Language: Another significant difference is the language used for scripting. Ansible uses YAML (YAML Ain't Markup Language), which is a human-readable data serialization format. In contrast, Apache Ant uses XML (Extensible Markup Language) for scripting build files.
Orchestration vs Build Tool: Ansible is primarily used as an orchestration tool, focusing on automating and managing the configuration of systems. It handles tasks like provisioning, software deployment, and configuration management. Apache Ant, on the other hand, is mainly used as a build tool, specifically for Java projects, to automate the building and deployment process.
Platform Independence: Ansible offers platform independence, as it can manage and automate the configuration of systems across different operating systems and cloud platforms. Apache Ant, on the other hand, is more focused on Java projects and is primarily used for building and deploying Java applications.
Learning Curve: Ansible, with its simpler YAML syntax and easier learning curve, is considered more accessible for beginners. Apache Ant, while powerful, has a steeper learning curve due to its XML-based syntax and complex configuration.
Interoperability: Ansible provides extensive support for various plugins and integrations, enabling interoperability with other tools and systems. Apache Ant also offers integration with external tools but is more limited in terms of its interoperability capabilities compared to Ansible.

In summary, Ansible and Apache Ant differ in their execution methods, scripting languages, usage as either an orchestration tool or build tool, platform independence, learning curve, and interoperability capabilities.

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Advice on Ansible, Apache Ant

Anonymous

Sep 17, 2019

Needs advice

I'm just getting started using Vagrant to help automate setting up local VMs to set up a Kubernetes cluster (development and experimentation only). (Yes, I do know about minikube)

I'm looking for a tool to help install software packages, setup users, etc..., on these VMs. I'm also fairly new to Ansible, Chef, and Puppet. What's a good one to start with to learn? I might decide to try all 3 at some point for my own curiosity.

The most important factors for me are simplicity, ease of use, shortest learning curve.

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Detailed Comparison

Ansible	Apache Ant
Ansible is an IT automation tool. It can configure systems, deploy software, and orchestrate more advanced IT tasks such as continuous deployments or zero downtime rolling updates. Ansible’s goals are foremost those of simplicity and maximum ease of use.	Ant is a Java-based build tool. In theory, it is kind of like Make, without Make's wrinkles and with the full portability of pure Java code.
Ansible's natural automation language allows sysadmins, developers, and IT managers to complete automation projects in hours, not weeks.;Ansible uses SSH by default instead of requiring agents everywhere. Avoid extra open ports, improve security, eliminate "managing the management", and reclaim CPU cycles.;Ansible automates app deployment, configuration management, workflow orchestration, and even cloud provisioning all from one system.	The most complete Java build and deployment tool available.;Platform neutral and can handle platform specific properties such as file separators;Can be used to perform platform specific tasks such as modifying the modified time of a file using 'touch' command;Scripts are written using plain XML. If you are already familiar with XML, you can learn pretty quickly;Automate complicated repetitive tasks;Interface to develop custom tasks;Can be easily invoked from the command line and it can integrate with free and commercial IDEs
Statistics
GitHub Stars 66.9K	GitHub Stars 449
GitHub Forks 24.1K	GitHub Forks 449
Stacks 19.5K	Stacks 250
Followers 15.6K	Followers 151
Votes 1.3K	Votes 7
Pros & Cons
Pros 284 Agentless 210 Great configuration 199 Simple 176 Powerful 155 Easy to learn Cons 8 Dangerous 5 Hard to install 3 Doesn't Run on Windows 3 Backward compatibility 3 Bloated	Pros 4 Flexible 1 Simple 1 Easy to write own java-build-hooks 1 Easy to learn Cons 1 Old and not widely used anymore 1 Slow
Integrations
Nexmo Stackdriver VMware vSphere Docker OpenStack Amazon EC2 Rackspace Cloud Servers Google Compute Engine New Relic PagerDuty	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Ansible, Apache Ant?

Apache Maven

Maven allows a project to build using its project object model (POM) and a set of plugins that are shared by all projects using Maven, providing a uniform build system. Once you familiarize yourself with how one Maven project builds you automatically know how all Maven projects build saving you immense amounts of time when trying to navigate many projects.

Chef

Chef enables you to manage and scale cloud infrastructure with no downtime or interruptions. Freely move applications and configurations from one cloud to another. Chef is integrated with all major cloud providers including Amazon EC2, VMWare, IBM Smartcloud, Rackspace, OpenStack, Windows Azure, HP Cloud, Google Compute Engine, Joyent Cloud and others.

Terraform

With Terraform, you describe your complete infrastructure as code, even as it spans multiple service providers. Your servers may come from AWS, your DNS may come from CloudFlare, and your database may come from Heroku. Terraform will build all these resources across all these providers in parallel.

Gradle

Gradle is a build tool with a focus on build automation and support for multi-language development. If you are building, testing, publishing, and deploying software on any platform, Gradle offers a flexible model that can support the entire development lifecycle from compiling and packaging code to publishing web sites.

Capistrano

Capistrano is a remote server automation tool. It supports the scripting and execution of arbitrary tasks, and includes a set of sane-default deployment workflows.

Puppet Labs

Puppet is an automated administrative engine for your Linux, Unix, and Windows systems and performs administrative tasks (such as adding users, installing packages, and updating server configurations) based on a centralized specification.

Salt

Salt is a new approach to infrastructure management. Easy enough to get running in minutes, scalable enough to manage tens of thousands of servers, and fast enough to communicate with them in seconds. Salt delivers a dynamic communication bus for infrastructures that can be used for orchestration, remote execution, configuration management and much more.

Bazel

Bazel is a build tool that builds code quickly and reliably. It is used to build the majority of Google's software, and thus it has been designed to handle build problems present in Google's development environment.

Fabric

Fabric is a Python (2.5-2.7) library and command-line tool for streamlining the use of SSH for application deployment or systems administration tasks. It provides a basic suite of operations for executing local or remote shell commands (normally or via sudo) and uploading/downloading files, as well as auxiliary functionality such as prompting the running user for input, or aborting execution.

AWS OpsWorks

Start from templates for common technologies like Ruby, Node.JS, PHP, and Java, or build your own using Chef recipes to install software packages and perform any task that you can script. AWS OpsWorks can scale your application using automatic load-based or time-based scaling and maintain the health of your application by detecting failed instances and replacing them. You have full control of deployments and automation of each component

Related Comparisons

Ansible vs Apache Ant: What are the differences?

Execution Method: The key difference between Ansible and Apache Ant lies in their execution methods. Ansible follows a push-based model, where the control machine pushes tasks and commands to be executed on remote hosts. On the other hand, Apache Ant uses a pull-based model, where the build file is executed on the control machine, pulling the required tasks and targets for execution.
Language: Another significant difference is the language used for scripting. Ansible uses YAML (YAML Ain't Markup Language), which is a human-readable data serialization format. In contrast, Apache Ant uses XML (Extensible Markup Language) for scripting build files.
Orchestration vs Build Tool: Ansible is primarily used as an orchestration tool, focusing on automating and managing the configuration of systems. It handles tasks like provisioning, software deployment, and configuration management. Apache Ant, on the other hand, is mainly used as a build tool, specifically for Java projects, to automate the building and deployment process.
Platform Independence: Ansible offers platform independence, as it can manage and automate the configuration of systems across different operating systems and cloud platforms. Apache Ant, on the other hand, is more focused on Java projects and is primarily used for building and deploying Java applications.
Learning Curve: Ansible, with its simpler YAML syntax and easier learning curve, is considered more accessible for beginners. Apache Ant, while powerful, has a steeper learning curve due to its XML-based syntax and complex configuration.
Interoperability: Ansible provides extensive support for various plugins and integrations, enabling interoperability with other tools and systems. Apache Ant also offers integration with external tools but is more limited in terms of its interoperability capabilities compared to Ansible.

Ansible vs Apache Ant

Overview