From 8dd5a4f0b287c1718510a78440a4ec978fd462a6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Michael DeHaan Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2013 21:56:55 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] Minor playbooks doc tweaks. --- docsite/latest/rst/playbooks.rst | 15 +++++++++++---- 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/docsite/latest/rst/playbooks.rst b/docsite/latest/rst/playbooks.rst index 52a4c6a30e9..04e6c5cec64 100644 --- a/docsite/latest/rst/playbooks.rst +++ b/docsite/latest/rst/playbooks.rst @@ -7,9 +7,10 @@ Intro to Playbooks About Playbooks ``````````````` -Playbooks are a completely different way to use ansible than in task execution mode, and are -particularly powerful. Simply put, playbooks are the basis for a really simple -configuration management and multi-machine deployment system, +Playbooks are a completely different way to use ansible than in adhoc task execution mode, and are +particularly powerful. + +Simply put, playbooks are the basis for a really simple configuration management and multi-machine deployment system, unlike any that already exist, and one that is very well suited to deploying complex applications. Playbooks can declare configurations, but they can also orchestrate steps of @@ -35,7 +36,9 @@ index after you're done with this section. Playbook Language Example ````````````````````````` -Playbooks are expressed in YAML format and have a minimum of syntax. +Playbooks are expressed in YAML format (see :doc:`YAMLSyntax`) and have a minimum of syntax, which intentionally +tries to not be a programming language or script, but rather a model of a configuration or a process. + Each playbook is composed of one or more 'plays' in a list. The goal of a play is to map a group of hosts to some well defined roles, represented by @@ -47,6 +50,10 @@ orchestrate multi-machine deployments, running certain steps on all machines in the webservers group, then certain steps on the database server group, then more commands back on the webservers group, etc. +"plays" are more or less a sports analogy. You can have quite a lot of plays that affect your systems +to do different things. It's not as if you were just defining one particular state or model, and you +can run different plays at different times. + For starters, here's a playbook that contains just one play:: ---