Manifest or Class?

I have the unfortunate job of installing IRIS and Healthshare (real Healthshare not Healthconnect) on 16 difference instances (tst, stg, prd with mirrors etc). the Dev was set up manually (mostly by me).

So I decided to create a class that installed the db's, namespaces, mappings and HSREGISTRY options , i then decided an installer manifest was a better idea, I keep changing my mind on which!.  I understanding manifest is "typically" for dockers to create the environment but have seen ISC use them for creating new setups aswell (outside docker)

As such I'm looking for opinions on which is the "best", mainly to stop me from changing my mind every 5 seconds.

Also if anyone has a healthshare (specificially HSREGISTRY configurations items) manifest they'd like to share?