Ansible is an open source continuous configuration automation (CCA) tool. You can use it to automate the management of the configuration of host systems. For example: installing and configuring applications, services, security policies; or to perform a wide variety of other administration and configuration tasks.

What software assets does your organization use? What sounds like a simple question is anything but. If we include every package and dependency that ends up in the code we produce then for most development teams the truthful answer is ‘we don’t know’. As we’ve said enough times already, that really isn’t good enough anymore. And that’s one of the core motivations behind Cloudsmith.

At Cloudsmith, you will often hear us refer to our mantra of “Automate Everything”. It a quest that we never deviate from, and we believe that anything that can be automated, should be automated. With that in mind, we would like to show you how simple it is to integrate a Cloudsmith repository with your Buildkite pipeline, and automate the pushing of your build artifacts into your own private repository for further CI/CD steps or even as a source for your global distribution needs.

One reason for building a ‘single source of truth’ for software assets is that it gives the organization control over who can use what when. The ‘wild West’ of public repositories gives no control at all and can lead to a situation in which packages and dependencies of dubious provenance are integrated into builds without a second thought. Within the Cloudsmith world, we want to have the maximum security and control possible.