Workstation Role #

Purpose #

The workstation role configures a host as a developer/admin workstation with users, development tools, and infrastructure automation tooling.

Capabilities #

User Management #

Creates dev users with configurable primary/extra groups
Fetches SSH public keys from GitHub
Sets up home directories and shell preferences

Development Tools #

Category	Packages
Core	git, vim, tmux, golang
ISO/Image	Tools for working with disk images
X11	Display support for GUI tools

HashiCorp Tools #

Configures the HashiCorp RPM repository and installs:

Terraform — Infrastructure as code
Packer — Image building

AI Tools #

Node.js — Runtime for AI tooling
Claude Code and other AI assistants

Virtualization #

Libvirt/KVM support for local VM testing
Podman for container workflows

Configuration #

Define users in inventory (group_vars or host_vars):

dev_users:
  - name: cdeever
    primary_group: cdeever
    extra_groups:
      - wheel
    home: /home/cdeever
    github_keys_url: "https://github.com/cdeever.keys"

Use Cases #

Bootstrap node — Admin environment for running Ansible playbooks
Dev workstation — Full development environment for infrastructure work
Build host — Image factory with Packer/Terraform installed

Relationship to Other Roles #

Role	Relationship
base	Workstation depends on base for system packages
artifacts	May be co-located to serve build outputs