Ansible newbie, reporting misleading documentation on roles

[Spencer Brown]

In the ansible docs for Playbook Roles and Include Statements, it says that once you set up a role x and reference it in a playbook:

• Any copy tasks can reference files in roles/x/files/ without having to path them relatively or absolutely
  
• Any script tasks can reference scripts in roles/x/files/ without having to path them relatively or absolutely
• Any template tasks can reference files in roles/x/templates/ without having to path them relatively or absolutely
• Any include tasks can reference files in roles/x/tasks/ without having to path them relatively or absolutely

 This was misleading to me, I assumed I could just create a playbook, call in the role, and reference files and templates in the role without qualification.

The truth is: Any tasks WITHIN THE ROLE'S DIRECTORY STRUCTURE can reference files without having to path them.  Not "Any tasks".

I finally figured this out by finding this GitHub issue, within which it is pointed out by jimi-c that "the role_path is only searched when the task itself comes from a role". 

Upon reflection, it makes sense, because a playbook can have multiple roles, and which one should it search? But for a newbie, this is quite confusing.

It would be nice if the documentation were updated.

[Brian Coca]

I hope this is clearer
http://github.com/ansible/ansible/commit/593d80c63d408012550850eb06d85387588cee3b



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Brian Coca