directory layout for grouping playbooks - ansible.cfg ?

[Torsten Reinhard]

Hi,

we have several playbooks and roles in our project so I try to organize them in that way:

\---deployment
    \---trunk
        |   ansible.cfg
        |   app1.yml
        |   ....yml
        |   app[N].yml
        +---files
        +---filter_plugins
        +---group_vars
        +---library
        +---playbooks
        |   +---provisioning
        |   |   |   binaryBuild.yml
        |   |   |   root.yml
        |   |   |   site.yml
        |   |   |   user.yml
        |   |   +---roles
        |   |   |   test-java.yml
        |   |   |   +---java

we put the ansible.cfg to the root of our project (trunk) to keep all settings in a central place, so whenever somebody checks out that project it should be executable.

Now, when invoking

ansible-playbook -i /path/to/inventory/hosts playbooks/provisioning/site.yml

the execution faills because of missing roles, filter_plugins and so on. Ansible tries to load those relative to the playbook - and not relative to the current directory!

Only workaround I found is to add a list of settings to the ansible.cfg file:

roles_path = roles: ../roles: ../../roles
filter_plugins = filter_plugins:../filter_plugins:../../filter_plugins:~/.ansible/plugins/filter_plugins/:/usr/share/ansible_plugins/filter_plugins

Using ${ANSIBLE_HOME} in the ansible.cfg to have fixed path also did not work for me.

=> What is the "best practice" to organize real-life projects, containing a huge list of playbooks? 
=> Also, where do people put their "test playbooks", for integration testing of roles ?

I dont want a solution based on 
* ansible.cfg outside the project ( HOME directory or any other user dependant place)
* symlinks

I couldn´t find any hint concerning "test playbooks" and "organizing modules" in the documentation.

Thanx for any advice, 

Torsten

[Torsten Reinhard]

in addition, also the group_vars cannot be resolved - they are expected relative to the playbook(s) - or the inventory hosts file.

=> how do i define common group_vars/all.yml - when i want to structure my playbooks in (sub) directories ?

Regards, Torsten

[Ulrich Hochholdinger]

Hi,
I'm also in the situation to get "many" different projects under control and use following directory structure:
- one folder per project with dependeing playbooks and roles
- global inventory with one folder per stage (since the project share hosts I made only one inventory )
- group_vars and host_vars only in inventory
- global "site.yml' including playbooks out of projects
- "only for "global_roles" I had to add one Entry in roles_path in my ansible.cfg

I don't know if this is good practice. Improvements and tips are welcome :D

Details:

site.yml example:
---
- include project1/deployment.yml
- include project2/play.yml
...

Directory-Layout:
 ansible/
├── site.yml
├── project1/
│   ├── character1.yml
│   ├── character2.yml
│   ├── config_mgmt.yml
│   ├── deployment.yml
│   ├── library/
│   │   └── module1
│   ├── roles/
│   │   ├── role1/
│   │   └── role2/
│   └── site.yml
├── project2/
│   ├── roles/
│   └──  ...
├── project3/
├── .../
├── global_roles/
│   ├── role1/
│   └── role2/
├── inventory/
│   ├── development/
│   │   ├── project1
│   │   ├── project2
│   │   ├── ....
│   │   ├── group_vars/
│   │   └── host-vars/
│   ├── integration/
│   │   └── ...
│   ├── staging/
│   └── production/


Cheers
     Ulli

[Yoshi Spendiff]

Hi,

Torsten, did you ever find an answer?

It seems like it should be trivial to simply have a plays or playbooks directory, but I'm not finding a good way to do it...

Breaking down into projects isn't what I'm looking for as I'd like to share roles

Regards,

Yoshi

[Ben Cohen]

I also yearn for a solution to this problem -- I think that ansible playbooks don't compose well -- and roles are (in my opinion) a not-so-good abstraction for code re-use / process organization.  Frequently for the 'orchestration' portion of some automation I find myself needing playbooks and the only way I can write playbook logic with access to resources that is shared with other playbooks (vars, group_vars, plugins etc) is to keep them all in what becomes a giant directory of playbooks ...  Its both annoying and harder to organize/package for other users than it would be if I could compose the playbook units in a better way ...  I'd love to be able to:

(1) include a playbook from another playbook with dynamically specified hosts: eg something like: 

include: some-playbook.yml hosts={{some_host_or_group_determined_by_logic}}

(2) organize my playbooks so that I can suggest to other developers which playbooks are entry points and which are only meant to be used as part of other automation pipelines -- while keeping a unified 'file/template/plugin/var_file...' search space ...

include: ./some_dir/some-playbook.yml keep_resource_search_paths=true

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