Wikipedia
cdist is a free software configuration management system, which declares to adheres to the KISS principle. It manages nodes over SSH and requires only Bourne Shell to be installed on them and no agents (software required for some configuration management system to operate) are installed on nodes.
Types (pieces of code, describing intended state of node) are written in Bourne Shell. The system uses usual shell scripts and functions to express reusable descriptions of systems. The core of software, that manages ordering and executing code on nodes is written in Python, so controlling computer need to have installed Python version 3.2 or later.
For most GNU/Linux distributions, required version of Python is provided in default repositories. Cdist is included as part of Debian GNU/Linux distribution.