Using source blocks instead of Ansible

[William Denton <wtd@pobox.com>]

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Is anyone using Org for remote configuration management instead of a tool like 
Ansible?

For example:  I like to install R from source to /usr/local/src/R/ so that I 
always have the latest version.  I do this (changing the version numbers as 
needed, though looking at it now I see I should set the version number as a 
variable):

#+BEGIN_SRC shell
cd /usr/local/src/R
curl -O http://cran.utstat.utoronto.ca/src/base/R-3/R-3.2.4.tar.gz
tar xzvf R-3.2.4.tar.gz
cd R-3.2.4
./configure
make
make check
cd ..
rm -f R Rscript
ln -s R-3.2.4/bin/R R
ln -s R-3.2.4/bin/Rscript Rscript
#+END_SRC

I do that on a few machines and copy and paste as needed.  Now, I could use

:dir /me@remote:

to run that on another machine.  And if I want to run that on multiple machines 
I could change the target as needed.

Has anyone taken this to the next level so it's easier to manage tasks like 
this, more reproducible, tidier, and closer to Ansible or Chef?  If so I'd love 
to see an example.  Or if anyone's tried and found it's just easier to use a 
proper purpose-built system, that's good to know too.

Looking in the archives I see there was mention a couple of years ago of 
org-converge, but it's idle:

https://github.com/wallyqs/org-converge

Cheers,

Bill
-- 
William Denton ↔  Toronto, Canada ↔  https://www.miskatonic.org/