TL;DR -- Expanding the use of tags to include filtering at the playbook or 
include level could facilitate the iterative nature of playbook and role 
development while also making roles on ansible-galaxy more widely 
applicable.

I just stumbled on to this topic with the same need and it seems sort of 
unresolved. This relates to a basic knot I've been running up against with 
Ansible. That is, the relationship between "roles" and "tags". I think that 
depending on what you're trying to do with Ansible, and to some degree how 
you perceive your task at hand (are you IT? A developer? Management?), 
different people have different needs and expectations.

Another knot relates to the progression and maturation of a playbook in to 
a properly organized role and eventually a set of roles. I found myself 
describing a new infrastructure project and going through the following 
steps:

1.) A single playbook that does a few things I want
2.) A single role with everything broken in to task files, templates, etc...
3.) A set of tags to break up rational sets of tasks
4.) The break-up of tagged tasks in to individual roles

But there are sticky parts between each step. As you migrate from one step 
to the next, you're having to reorganize; moving tasks in to files, files 
in to folders, and so-on. It's often dirty business. As a developer you 
might want to run it one way, but management wants you to run it another. 
As an IT person you might want everyone to keep their hands off and it's 
all run your way. The need for of-the-moment maneuvering requires both 
flexibility and rigidity. As both roles and the organization mature, things 
become more rigid, more folder-oriented, etc. In the meantime, I think tags 
should be very flexible in their application. I'd like to filter by tag at 
almost any level, from the command-line, from the playbooks, inside any 
include statement, etc... 

As it is I've found most roles on Ansible Galaxy unusable. Roles seems to 
have an identity crisis--sometimes there's a role for organizing something 
as small as PHP, other times something as large as an entire stack. In many 
cases, I often find that the role doesn't always fit in to my way of doing 
things. I think that expanding the breadth of tags to be as flexible as 
possible would help make things in that ecosystem fit together more 
gracefully.

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