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Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Buildfiles (as opposed to dotfiles) Provision your Debian with Ansible

Buildfiles: Ansible automated leight-weight and sensible Debian provisioning - cytopia/ansible-debian

Buildfiles is an Ansible-based provisioning tool for Debian systems. It automates the setup and configuration of Debian machines by treating infrastructure as code, similar to how dotfiles manage configuration files.… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Buildfiles (as opposed to dotfiles) Provision your Debian with Ansible launched in 2017; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    DebOps - Your Debian-based data center in a box. Contribute to debops/debops development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2EA

    Happy new year folks! This tool was born out of a situation where I had 'inherited' a bunch of servers that were not under any form of config management. Oh, the horror... Enroll 'harvests' system information such as what packages are installed, what services are running, what files have 'differed' from their out-of-the-box defaults, and what other custom snowflake data might exist. The harvest state data can be kept as its own sort of SBOM, but also can be converted in a mere second or two into fully-functional Ansible roles/playbooks/inventory. It can be run remotely over SSH or…

    Jan 2026 · enroll.sh · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Your very own offline-first privacy-centric open-source data-center! https://homelabos.com/

    2018 · gitlab.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Minimal distributed configuration management in bash - frameable/aviary.sh

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Server and configuration management for humans

    2015 · ansiblefordevops.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Efficiently manage your Rails environment with Ansible.

    2015 · efficientrailsdevops.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7HM

    A developer's machine accumulates tools fast. A Rust CLI you compiled last year, a Python formatter installed via `uv`, a language server pulled from npm, a terminal emulator from a curl script, a Go binary built from source. Each came from a different package manager, each with its own install incantation you half-remember. I wanted a way to declare what I need without adopting a complex system like Nix or Ansible just for a single laptop. The result was a plain old Makefile. I wrote a short post on using Make (along with a tiny bash script and fzf) to create a searchable, single-command…

    Mar 2026 · thottingal.in · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Jupyter Notebook Kernel for running Ansible Tasks and Playbooks - ansible/ansible-jupyter-kernel

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9
    DepsHub▲349

    Update dependencies using AI

    2024 · depshub.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Interactive Ansible tutorials with dead simple setup via Docker - turkenh/ansible-interactive-tutorial

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11
    Earthly▲107

    Build anything via containers

    2020 · earthly.dev · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Custom ansible modules. Contribute to cytopia/ansible-modules development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Assisted automation writing tool for your Ansible Playbooks

    2022 · steampunk.si · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Make a self hosted OpenVPN server in 15 minutes. Contribute to robbintt/popup-openvpn development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Bring your dotfiles to remote machine via SSH. Contribute to FOBshippingpoint/shittp development by creating an account on GitHub.

    Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Move dotfiles to ~/.config/lnk, get symlinks back, use Git normally. Single binary, no config files, no fluff. Built because chezmoi was too complex and plain Git was too manual.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Fully fledged (HA) Kubernetes Cluster using official kubeadm, ansible and helm. Tested on RHEL/CentOS/Ubuntu with support of http_proxy, dashboard installed, ingress controller, heapster - using official helm charts - ReSearchITEng/kubeadm-playbook

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    Ansible role to render an arbitrary number of Jinja2 templates into cloudformation files and create any number of stacks. - cytopia/ansible-role-cloudformation

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    This project addresses the inefficiencies of traditional Dockerfile-based container builds where each customization layer creates storage bloat through duplicate dependencies from repeated apt-get install commands, network inefficiency from redundant package downloads across different images, and slow iteration cycles requiring full rebuilds of all previous steps. Our solution enables building minimal base images from scratch using debootstrap that precisely include only required components in the initial build, while allowing creation of specialized variants (Java, Kafka, etc.) from these…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20
  21. 21

    Docker configuration for building Linux From Scratch system - reinterpretcat/lfs

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22UW

    What if Dependabot and Ansible had a child? Well for me that could be Updatecli. Updatecli is a project that I started to help maintain the infrastructure of the Jenkins project. I needed something flexible enough to update YAML with whatever information needed. Because let’s say it, everybody loves YAML. YAML is everywhere. Run it from everywhere… Updatecli is a command-line tool written in Golang and available for Windows, Linux, MacOSx, amd64, arm64, thank you Goreleaser All of that to say that it runs from wherever CI or laptop we need. As of today, Updatecli opened over 3000 Pull…

    2022 · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    I kept seeing every npm/pnpm/yarn/bun/uv supply chain post end with the same advice (set a minimum release age, turn off install scripts), and while I know cooldowns are "controversial", they do work. But even if you convince people that they should set cooldowns, it seems many don't end up following through, not sure why, maybe because it means hand-editing five config files in five formats with five different time units, or perhaps the "it won't happen to me" syndrome (or "I'll do it later, it seems complicated" where it's actually very simple). So I created a tool that…

    Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Hey HN, long time lurker here. I humbly present ara which is a project I created back at Red Hat in 2016 (before AWX was open source) to make my life easier working with distributed and large scale Ansible playbooks. It is designed to be simple and compatible with however you're already running Ansible today without needing to change much of your existing workflows. My time and skills are limited but I have learned a lot and I am happy with how the project has steadily improved over the years with the much appreciated help of contributors. If you'd like to read more about the project, the…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →