Walter

Walter is an infrastructure automation tool designed to provision cloud instances and configure them as a personalized development environment. It combines the power of OpenTofu (for infrastructure) and Ansible (for configuration), all orchestrated through Clojure and Babashka.

The primary goal of Walter is to automate the setup of a consistent, high-productivity development environment on cloud providers like Hetzner Cloud (hcloud) and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Features

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Provision cloud resources using OpenTofu templates.
• Automated Configuration: Set up users, SSH keys, and system settings using Ansible roles.
• Developer Tooling: Automatically install common development tools via devbox (Nix-based package manager).
• Project Setup: Clone your Git repositories and configure multiple worktrees automatically.
• Personalized Environment: Built-in support for tools like Emacs (Doom Emacs), Zellij, Fish, Atuin, and more.
• Orchestrated Workflow: Single-command execution to go from nothing to a fully working cloud development box.

Prerequisites

• Babashka
• Clojure
• OpenTofu
• Ansible
• Devbox (used on the target instance)
• devenv (optional, for setting up the local development environment)

Getting Started

1. Configuration

Walter uses big-config for managing its configuration and templates.

You may need to set environment variables or provide configuration values for your hyperscalers:

• HCLOUD_TOKEN for Hetzner Cloud.
• OCI configuration (e.g., via oci-cli) for Oracle Cloud.

2. Available Commands

Walter uses Babashka (bb) to expose its functionality:

• Full Workflow:

  bb walter create

  This command performs a full "create" cycle: it renders OpenTofu templates, initializes and applies the infrastructure, then renders Ansible playbooks and executes them against the newly created instance.

• OpenTofu Tasks:

  bb tofu render          # Render templates to .dist/
  bb tofu init            # Initialize OpenTofu
  bb tofu plan            # Preview changes
  bb tofu apply           # Apply infrastructure changes
  bb tofu destroy         # Teardown infrastructure

• Ansible Tasks:

  bb ansible render       # Render Ansible playbooks and inventories
  bb ansible playbook     # Run the Ansible playbook
  bb ansible-local        # Run Ansible tasks locally

3. Customization

The configuration logic is primarily located in:

• src/io/github/amiorin/walter/ansible.clj: Defines users, packages, and repositories.
• resources/io/github/amiorin/walter/tools/: Contains OpenTofu and Ansible templates.

You can modify ansible.clj to change the list of default packages or the repositories you want to clone.

Project Structure

• src/: Clojure source code for orchestration logic.
• resources/: OpenTofu and Ansible templates and roles.
• env/: Development environment setup.
• .dist/: (Generated) Temporary directory for rendered configuration files and tool state.
• bb.edn: Task definitions for Babashka.
• deps.edn: Clojure dependencies.

License

Copyright © 2024 Alberto Miorin.

Distributed under the MIT License.