“In Python” does seem like an odd constraint. I take the OP’s intent to be “let’...

inshadows · on June 13, 2020

I assume you consider Ansible to be "declarative". By that definition of "declarative", the following Bash script is also "declarative":

    #!/bin/bash
    rm -f /etc/bar
    mkdir -p /etc/conf.d
    cp -u /srv/src.txt /etc/conf.d/

because Anisble playbook is really just bunch of following statements

    if (!stuff_exists(stuff))
        create_stuff()

which the above utilities in Bash script do with the provided flags.

Ansible "declarativeness" isn't anything worthy of worship. It's plain dumb definition of sequence of steps to take with added guard for each step.

So let's be honest and stop pretending that this "declarativeness" is anything novel or of any value worthy of writing sequence of (guarded) commands in ad-hoc YAML language. Just add some sugar for the pattern above to a decent language and that's all that's needed.

Bystroushaak · on June 13, 2020

Op is python programmer who is using python for everything for more than 13 years, so there you have the reason. I am also writing my own programming language .. in python: https://github.com/Bystroushaak/tinySelf

stonith · on June 13, 2020

You could kind of do this using ansible-runner to dynamically generate a playbook that does what you want.