"when" attribute in a play

[alan....@gmail.com]

Today I needed to add a condition to a play in my playbook. If it is true, the tasks are executed.

I'd expect this intuitive code to work:

- hosts:all

  become:yes

  when: <condition>

  tasks:

    <task1>

    ...

    <taskn>

Unfortunately, "when" is not a valid attribute of the play and I'm required to do it in a less intuitive way: e.g. replicate the when attribute for all tasks (worst solution), move all tasks to a single block of tasks and assign a when attribute to it or moving the play to a separate yaml and conditionally include it. All these solutions seem more cumbersome than just setting the when attribute to a play. Is there a reason why it is not supported?

Thanks in advance!

[joseph.alexanderiii]

That's a really hard question to answer.  My question to you would be why can't you just block it? 

Regards, 

Joe. 

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[Michael Mullay]

you can always create a main.yml in your role, then just conditionally import entire playbooks (like 'some_playbook.yml' in this case) such as:

$ cat main.yml

- import_tasks: some_playbook.yml

  when: inventory_hostname_short|regex_search('host1|otherhost2')

Or any other conditional that works with 'when'

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[Vladimir Botka]

On Fri, 18 Dec 2020 13:01:52 -0800 (PST)
"alan....@gmail.com" <alan....@gmail.com> wrote:

> - hosts:all
> become:yes
> when: <condition>
> tasks:
> <task1>

Test the condition in the first task. For example

- hosts: all
tasks:
- meta: end_play
when: not condition|default('false')|bool
- debug:
msg: Start play

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Vladimir Botka