Plans to write a custom module in Perl 11 Oct 2015

I’m getting an idea to implement some custom modules for Ansible, but I’d prefer to use Perl instead of the built-in Python framework.

I’ve found a small project on github of someone implementing the same semantics of the built-in Python AnsibleModule here: https://github.com/PWBENNETT/perl-Ansible-Module

It looks promising, although, I didn’t understand why it was doing everything that it was. I re-read Lorin Hochstein’s excellent chapter on writing custom modules in Ansible Up & Running and it became clear that the example module in Hochstein’s book would end up being a literal translation of the Python code to Perl. Just a bunch of helpers to get the inputs and outputs working as expected.

The only thing that stands out as a problem is that using the Python framework lets you include non-system modules and have them packaged by Ansible. The packaged script and dependencies is the thing that gets copied to the hosts to execute. Using Perl the only way I see working around this is having a two-stage process using pp to package the script and dependent modules as a single script that only requires system Perl.

The plan is:

• git clone https://github.com/PWBENNETT/perl-Ansible-Module.git into my Ansible playbook repo
• Tranlate the custom Ansible module in Ansible Up & Running into Perl using Ansible::Module
• Create a Makefile that uses pp to create the final artifact.
• Test the new custom module out
• Send feedback to https://github.com/PWBENNETT