Configuration management is best with operating system packages, so in creating "Ansible", not only did you completely miss the ball, you created a monster. People now hack ad hoc YAML files instead of designing clean OS packages to manipulate the configuration.
It's fine if you don't like it - there are things I don't like about it, but ultimately single packages can't express multi-node configurations very easily. We need something.
While I "grew up" as it were, believing in RPM, we live in a very post-distro, multi-language kind of world, and there's a need for things to glue that together. How many times have I tried to campaign against "wget tarball" as a deployment mechanism, I don't know. It's rough and yes, there's a lack of discipline in ops that needs to improve.
Immutable systems is a VERY interesting way to solve that, but it doesn't work for certain stateful things and you always need something to deploy the undercloud.
I'd encourage you to try to build your own experimental project to try to find different ways to do it, as this is the only real way that technology ever gets ahead.
Funny you should mention RPM's, since that's one of the packaging formats we perform configuration management in.
I have my own configuration management framework which can add and remove configuration from files that each package brings on. It's written in AWK. No knowledge is required to use it - configuration packages deliver just their configuration files' excerpts. In addition to being able to template them with regular shell variables, self-assembly is supported as well.
How is that different than what Puppet, Chef, CFEngine, or any number of other configuration management tools do [and did long before Ansible]? How do you propose to have a package that requires dynamic configuration supplied by the system (something from dhcp, for example). Are you conflating package management and configuration management? I'm genuinely curious.
It's not any different, they all suck. Read my reply above to the author on how it was solved cleanly without needing to hack anything, just deliver a config excerpt via an OS package and it works. It's not open sourced yet, mainly due to lack of spare time to spend on computers and my cronic exhaustion.
The first proof of concept prototype was developed in 2007 based on insights gained with packaging and system engineering at two different companies, one a software one and the other a very large financial institution.
Refined framework (oh how I hate that word now thanks to web developers!) went into production in 2009 on Solaris 10, depending on advanced AT&T SVR4 packaging features. It was then subsequently ported to CentOS / RHEL RPM and went into production around 2011. It's been the corner stone of configuration management for the entire infrastructure, particularly production ever since.
Ugh. Conveying tone on the internet... I mean it sincerely: I do wish you good luck. Please about your project on HN when you release it, I'd love to see it. While I think it's deceptively hard, but config/immutable state are fascinating areas.
