Generating device configurations in "netlab create"

[ipspace]

We are at the point where we could generate all device configurations in "netlab create". As that's part of the "netlab up" process, the regular users wouldn't notice; we'd just be shifting work around ("netlab initial --no-refresh" would just skip the configuration creation step). This change would also simplify a few other things I now have to drag around to retain backward compatibility.

The only drawback I can see is that today someone could still use (undocumented) "netlab initial --generate ansible" command to generate device configs in Ansible (11.x and older). The only use case for that is someone using a custom (or modified) device template that uses an Ansible jinja2 filter we didn't implement. Do we want to retain compatibility with that hypothetical use case, or do we say "we had to break some stuff, you can thank the Ansible team" and move on?

Any thoughts @jbemmel @ssasso @sdargoeuves @steffann @ddutt

[sdargoeuves]

This is not a use case for us, happy to break this part and move on. Fresh start in 2026 🎉

[steffann]

Break it and move on. Undocumented + hypothetical isn’t worth the effort of supporting