Ansible vs Appveyor: What are the differences?
Developers describe Ansible as "Radically simple configuration-management, application deployment, task-execution, and multi-node orchestration engine". Ansible is an IT automation tool. It can configure systems, deploy software, and orchestrate more advanced IT tasks such as continuous deployments or zero downtime rolling updates. Ansible’s goals are foremost those of simplicity and maximum ease of use. On the other hand, Appveyor is detailed as "Continuous Integration and Deployment service for busy Windows developers". AppVeyor aims to give powerful Continuous Integration and Deployment tools to every .NET developer without the hassle of setting up and maintaining their own build server.
Ansible belongs to "Server Configuration and Automation" category of the tech stack, while Appveyor can be primarily classified under "Continuous Integration".
Some of the features offered by Ansible are:
- Ansible's natural automation language allows sysadmins, developers, and IT managers to complete automation projects in hours, not weeks.
- Ansible uses SSH by default instead of requiring agents everywhere. Avoid extra open ports, improve security, eliminate "managing the management", and reclaim CPU cycles.
- Ansible automates app deployment, configuration management, workflow orchestration, and even cloud provisioning all from one system.
On the other hand, Appveyor provides the following key features:
- Scriptless, repetitive, one-click deployment of build artifacts to multiple environments
- YAML configuration
- Backed by Windows Azure platform
"Agentless" is the primary reason why developers consider Ansible over the competitors, whereas "Github integration" was stated as the key factor in picking Appveyor.
Ansible is an open source tool with 38.2K GitHub stars and 16K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Ansible's open source repository on GitHub.
According to the StackShare community, Ansible has a broader approval, being mentioned in 961 company stacks & 588 developers stacks; compared to Appveyor, which is listed in 19 company stacks and 16 developer stacks.
