The docs: Well, they were in a mess for a while when I started and I agree that they're really neat now.
Declining community help: I was referring to a specific ml thread that I stumbled upon when I was unhappy with the (previous!) state of documentation, wherein someone asked whether you (both the company and you as a person) would consider putting the site in git / opening it for community improvements. You declined. That doesn't mean that I judge you for that decision, it just seemed like a wasted potential at that time to me (Given: "Site in disarray" and "Free help offered"). Nowhere did I state that you don't accept community support per se.
Template: Well, the big problem might be Github's support for this 'feature'. If I want to file a new ticket [1] there's nothing helpful here. Yes, there's a rather bland "Review the guidelines.." link, but frankly I didn't click that. Why? I know how to use Github to file tickets. It doesn't say "Please read this or your tickets will be closed" or even better, just embeds the template you require in the new ticket form. While I certainly understand that you want/need some structure, the user experience is currently Not That Good.
Lag in GH response: That .. wasn't actually my point. My (random, sample) ticket was promptly active, nice people discussed it. I don't even care too much about the fact that it isn't solved after six month. I was mostly trying to point out that Ansible, for me and in my personal use cases, seemed a little unreliable and incomplete. This is one of the reasons I _need_ to use shell: or I cannot have a playbook that starts postgresql or dovecot, period. Is it important for Ansible Inc or the world? Probably not, but workarounds like these are the reason I don't like looking at my playbook anymore.
I rejected Dockerfiles because a random list of shell commands isn't what I wanted. My Ansible files are now a mix of clean/official modules and some of the very same random shell commands, and not by choice.
Let's close with:
- I appreciate your project/product. It helped me a lot (see first sentence in the gp post)
- I'm sure Ansible works great for scenarios of various sizes. I don't claim my experience is to be expected for everyone (but note that some people at least have expressed similar feelings about the 'yml files turn to shell scripts' idea)
