Thanks for this example.  I’m still pondering over this and it’s possibilities 
but I’m thinking that I’m probably going to have to rip out a lot of the roles 
I’ve already defined and make them into task files called from more general 
roles unless I do a lot of explicit ‘when’ statements for calling roles in my 
playbooks.

Or maybe not.  I’m still trying to get my head around of it.

From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of James Cammarata
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2014 2:49 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [ansible-project] how to have general playlist call specific 
playlist and/or roles?

This will not work, since the hosts and roles must be known at the time the 
playbook is read, so you can't do variable substitutions on those.

An alternative to this method is to have just the one role that includes 
different task files based on the values of the system facts. See 
https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/test/integration/roles/test_apt/tasks/main.yml
 for example of how we limit the apt test to running on certain distributions. 
This way, you can keep common tasks together while only splitting out the 
distro-specific pieces.

This way, you could do the following:

- hosts: all
  roles:
  - { role: do_distro_stuff, target_os: 
"{{ansible_distribution|lower}}{{ansible_lsb.major_release}}" }

and then in roles/do_distro_stuff/main.yml:

# includes for distro-version specific tasks
- include: 'ubuntu12.yml'
  when: target_os == 'ubuntu12'
- include: 'ubtunu14.yml'
  when: target_os == 'ubuntu14'
# ...
# and then do common tasks here

So you'd have to add new lines there when new distros come out, but that's not 
something that occurs frequently so it's not a major concern.


On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 12:27 PM, Snyder, Chris 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I’m having a really hard time wrapping my head around how to organize my plays 
and roles with Ansible.

What I have:
                I have multiple Linux distros I need to support with Ansible.  
Each distro has different requirements which manifest themselves as different 
playbooks/roles/tasks/host groups.

What I want (i.e. this is what my brain is telling me *SHOULD* be the correct 
solution for this type of situation. And yes, I *DO* have a programmer back 
ground):
                Call a single, general Ansible playbook that determines the 
specific distro/host on client host and then executes a more specific playbook 
and/or set of roles for my target host or host group.

What I don’t want to do:

-          I don’t want to have to programmatically determine the distro of my 
target host BEFORE calling Ansible so I can pass some OS-specific playbook name 
to Ansible on the command line for specific host or groups of hosts.

-          I don’t want a SINGLE playbook which contains plays for all the OS’s 
I support – that’s just too large and unwieldy.

Obviously, Ansible doesn’t parse variables as part of include statements, but 
IDEALLY, the following example is how I feel I should be solving my problem:

- hosts: all
  Tasks:
    - name: Determine distrbution name and release
      set_fact: 
myos="{{ansible_distribution|lower}}{{ansible_lsb.major_release}}"

    - name: Group hosts by distro and release
      action: group_by key={{myos}}

- hosts: {{myos}}
  Roles:
    - {{myos}}

So, how do other people solve/organize their solutions to problems similar to 
this?

Thx
Chris.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Ansible Project" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>.
To post to this group, send email to 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ansible-project/BFD6B7398AEB474A9A28B39B9B5D00CB588A9696%40SRAexMBX05.sra.com<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ansible-project/BFD6B7398AEB474A9A28B39B9B5D00CB588A9696%40SRAexMBX05.sra.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Ansible Project" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>.
To post to this group, send email to 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ansible-project/CAMFyvFhfajjOpe_7svNzND0t3qpp3%3DBBoAkYF4pgoQVrEBaakQ%40mail.gmail.com<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ansible-project/CAMFyvFhfajjOpe_7svNzND0t3qpp3%3DBBoAkYF4pgoQVrEBaakQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Ansible Project" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ansible-project/BFD6B7398AEB474A9A28B39B9B5D00CB588AA0C1%40SRAexMBX05.sra.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Reply via email to