Does Ansible support inclusion of no-op/empty/placeholder tasks?

[Behrang Saeedzadeh]

In some test frameworks, we can start a test suite by providing a list of empty tests. Then we can implement the tests one by one.

Similarly, I want to start a playbook by only providing the set of tasks I want to execute, without implementing them:

- hosts: localhost

  tasks:

    - name: Step 1

    - name: Step 2

    - name: Step 3

But this is invalid syntax in Ansible.

Any workarounds available to do this?

[Jordan Borean]

The easiest way is to use the debug module and you can output an empty string, it would work like this

- name: test 1

  debug:

    msg: ""

- name: test 2

  debug:

     msg: ""

You can also use meta: noop but it isn't recommended for general use, it would work like this

- name: test 1

  meta: noop

- name: test 2

  meta: noop

Thanks

Jordan