Mac Maker Job Spec Files

Job Spec files or spec files, are JSON files that contain a series of absolute paths, that tell Mac Maker where to find the Ansible configuration required to provision a Mac.

Absolute paths are a bit of a pain to work with, but they are an excellent choice for removable media, such as USB sticks. If you wish to work with a private code source as your Mac Maker Profile, creating a Spec file on removable media is a simple solution.

• Job Spec File (spec.json) Specification

Working With Spec Files

Generally Mac Maker Profiles conform to the same basic structure, but Spec files allow you to break all conventions and point to whatever locations are convenient to you.

• Profile Details and Specification

The one unusual Spec file JSON key, is inventory. Ansible uses an inventory file to manage the lists of hosts that it will connect to. In Mac Maker’s traditional use case, it’s always connecting to localhost- so the inventory file has hard coded preset content for this. This content is always written to a file named “inventory” in the profile_data_path filesystem location.

Using a spec file, it’s possible to configure Ansible to provision remote Macs. There is complexity involved in doing this securely, please consult the Ansible documentation for more details.

An Example Spec File

{
  "workspace_root_path": "/Volumes/USB/mac_maker/installer.workspace/osx-profile-development",
  "profile_data_path": "/Volumes/USB/mac_maker/installer.workspace/osx-profile-development/profile",
  "galaxy_requirements_file": "/Volumes/USB/mac_maker/installer.workspace/osx-profile-development/profile/requirements.yml",
  "playbook": "/Volumes/USB/mac_maker/installer.workspace/osx-profile-development/profile/install.yml",
  "roles_path": [
    "/Volumes/USB/mac_maker/installer.workspace/osx-profile-development/profile/roles"
  ],
  "collections_path": [
    "/Volumes/USB/mac_maker/installer.workspace/osx-profile-development/profile/collections"
  ],
  "inventory": "/Volumes/USB/mac_maker/installer.workspace/osx-profile-development/profile/inventory"
}