Meeting Anže Luzar of XLAB Spotter at Ansible Community Day Berlin 2023

Anže shared with us about the XLAB Spotter Open Source contributions to the Ansible Challenge on 12th October 2023.

September 22, 2023

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Introduction

At the Ansible Community Day in Berlin 2023, I had the privilege of sitting down with Anže Luzar from XLAB Spotter to discuss the groundbreaking Ansible Playbook Scanning Tool known as “Steampunk Spotter.” This innovative tool complements the enterprise journey of Ansible automation by optimizing processes, enhancing reliability, security, and compliance, and offering a suite of advanced features for playbook developers and IT professionals. In our engaging conversation with Anže Luzar of XLAB Spotter at the Ansible Community Day in Berlin, we gained valuable insights into the remarkable contributions and future aspirations of this dynamic team. Anže, a DevSecOps Engineer, leads the charge in toolchain development, particularly in crafting the CLI and integrations for Steampunk Spotter.

Ansible Community Day

The Ansible Community Day in Berlin 2023 is an event organized by The Ansible Community Team at Red Hat. It is designed to connect with people who use, contribute to, and develop the Ansible project globally. This event serves as a platform to engage with the diverse Ansible community, including users, contributors, and developers, and to highlight their experiences and contributions.

Understanding XLAB Steampunk Spotter

Before diving into our interview with Anže, let’s take a moment to grasp the significance of XLAB Spotter. This Ansible Playbook Scanning Tool is designed to analyze Ansible playbooks comprehensively. It goes beyond merely identifying errors; it recommends playbook improvements, ensures compatibility with the latest Ansible versions, and detects deprecated modules and parameters. XLAB Spotter further empowers users to define custom rules and policies, check for best practices, and offer convenience features such as automatic issue fixing and module documentation. What sets it apart is its versatility — it can be integrated into various workflows, including command-line scanning, Git repository scanning, CI/CD integration, and code editor analysis. This means it’s a valuable asset for playbook developers, quality assurance managers, operations managers, and IT security specialists.

The Interview: Unveiling the Power of XLAB Spotter

Luca Berton: Guten Tag, friend. I’m here with Anže of XLAB Spotter. So, please introduce yourself to our friend.

Anže Luzar: Guten Tag. Wir sind hier in Berlin. But I will do it in English. So, yeah. We are from XLAB Steampunk. And I am a DevSecOps Engineer. And I’m leading the toolchain part. So, we’re actually doing the CLI, the Steampunk Spotter integrations.

This is my focus on that. But we’re actually preparing a lot of interesting things. Probably you have questions about it, right?

Luca Berton: Yeah, first of all, I will thank you for this interesting presentation that you did here for the Ansible Community Day. Can you tell me a little bit about the contribution to the community?

Anže Luzar: Yeah, actually, we did a little research with Steampunk Spotter, our internal tool, but ansible-lint as well, and we found a lot of different stuff in the open-source Ansible projects. We did the scanning of Ansible Lockdown, found some issues, corrected it with Spotter, did the rewrites, improved the content of the open source, and spread the knowledge about good Ansible content.

Luca Berton: Oh, thank you for sharing with our community. I’m sure that a lot of people will be super happy to see the result of this finding. And, of course, there is a recording of you, of you on the stage. Exactly. Um, what about, what is, how you see the future?

Anže Luzar: Yeah, we are actually preparing one interesting thing, which is the Ansible Challenge, where competitors will be able to solve different Ansible tasks. And do different Ansible tasks and actually test their knowledge of Ansible. And with that, we are like giving back to the community so that everyone can learn something new, uh, solve these challenges and for the best ones to actually earn very good prizes.

Luca Berton: Oh, pretty excited. I saw on the website that there are some very interesting things about virtual reality.

Am I right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Can you remind us of the date? You already set it up.

Anže Luzar: Yeah, so we have the; the first challenge starts on the 12th of October. So join the challenge and feel free to start solving those challenges.

Luca Berton: Oh, I can’t wait. That is great. Yeah. Somebody else that you would like to share?

Anže Luzar: I mean, yeah, there are interesting things coming up. We’re actually, uh, doing something good things with Spotter itself. So stay tuned for more updates about Steampunk Spotter. It’s new features, definitely something. And the new events that are coming, uh, within the Ansible community.

Luca Berton: Cool. This is so great. So, let’s automate more. Thank you, Anže.

Anže Luzar: Thank you, Luca. We are super happy. Yeah! Tschüss!

Conclusion

XLAB’s commitment to the Ansible community was evident through its extensive research and contributions. They conducted thorough scanning of open-source Ansible projects, including Ansible Lockdown, identifying issues and correcting them with Spotter. Their dedication to improving the quality and knowledge dissemination of Ansible content was truly commendable. Anže also unveiled an exciting initiative on the horizon — the Ansible Challenge. This competition promises to test the skills and knowledge of Ansible enthusiasts by presenting them with various tasks to solve. It’s not only an opportunity to learn but also a chance to win valuable prizes. With the first challenge scheduled for October 12th, the Ansible community can look forward to a thrilling learning experience. As Anže noted, there are more updates and events in the pipeline for Steampunk Spotter and the broader Ansible community. With their dedication to automation and knowledge-sharing, XLAB Spotter is poised to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of Ansible automation. In closing, this conversation with Anže Luzar leaves us inspired and eager to continue our journey in the world of Ansible automation. The community’s collaborative spirit, innovative initiatives, and passion for automation are sure to lead to exciting advancements in the field.

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