Qfyilyi

In my playbook I have several shell task per playbook, like ten or more. I want to use creates shell arg to avoid executing them over and over.

Currently I have this:

- name: Download sonar-runner

  get_url:

    url: http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/codehaus/sonar/runner/sonar-   runner-dist/2.4/sonar-runner-dist-2.4.zip

    dest: /tmp

    mode: 0755



- name: Unarchive

  unarchive:

    src: /tmp/sonar-runner-dist-2.4.zip

    dest: /opt/tools/sonar-runner-2.4



- name: Sym link

  shell: ln -s sonar-runner-2.4 sonar-runner

  args:

    creates: ~/.ansible/sonar-runner.task/step.3



- name: Configure profile

  shell: |

    echo 'export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/' > /etc/profile.d/maven.sh

    echo 'export M2_HOME=/opt/maven/apache-maven-3.5.3' >> /etc/profile.d/maven.sh

    echo 'export PATH=${M2_HOME}/bin:${PATH}' >> /etc/profile.d/maven.sh

  args:

    creates: ~/.ansible/sonar-runner.task/step.4

Is there any way to achieve this using variables. I'm thinking something like this:

- name: Sym link

  shell: ln -s sonar-runner-2.4 sonar-runner

  args:

    creates: ~/.ansible/{{playbook_name}}/{{task_index}}



- name: Configure profile

  shell: |

    echo 'export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/' > /etc/profile.d/maven.sh

    echo 'export M2_HOME=/opt/maven/apache-maven-3.5.3' >> /etc/profile.d/maven.sh

    echo 'export PATH=${M2_HOME}/bin:${PATH}' >> /etc/profile.d/maven.sh

  args:

    creates: ~/.ansible/{{playbook_name}}/{{task_index}}

Is there any way to do this? Am I missing something? Or isn't that the way Ansible works?

Is there any way to do this? Am I missing something? Or isn't that the way Ansible works?

Yes, yes, and no :-)

Is there any way to do this?

The shell: and command: support inline creates= declarations, so you can keep all of that together in one block (and thus it is a candidate for being a variable, or a yaml anchor):

- shell: |

    creates=/etc/profile.d/maven.sh

    echo 'hello' > /etc/profile.d/maven.sh

- command: |

    creates=/etc/profile.d/maven.sh

    cp /something /etc/profile.d/maven.sh

However, I just told you that for your information, and for the circumstances where these next set of steps won't work because ...

Am I missing something?

You want to use the built-in idempotency whenever possible, to get you out of the business of having to do manual "has this task run" bookkeeping. Thus:

- file:

    src: sonar-runner-2.4

    dest: sonar-runner

    state: link

- copy:

    dest: /etc/profile.d/maven.sh

    content: |

        export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/

        export M2_HOME=/opt/maven/apache-maven-3.5.3

        export PATH=${M2_HOME}/bin:${PATH}

I'm genuinely surprised ansible didn't whine when you tried to use ln manually, as it knows about common shell commands and will nudge you to switch to the built-in module file: