Ansible nested dictionary seems to do weird stuff with identical sub-groups

[I Viridis]

 # inventory.yml

   europe:

     children:

       germany:

         children:

           on-premise:

             hosts:

               127.0.0.1:

           datacenter:

             hosts:

               127.0.0.2:

       france:

         children:

           on-premise:

             hosts:

               127.0.0.3:

           datacenter:

             hosts:

               127.0.0.4:

Running the following command with different `--limit` options:

ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml random-playbook.yml --limit 'some-limit

- `europe` I expect to run 127.0.0.1, 127.0.0.2, 127.0.0.3, 127.0.0.4

- `on-premise` I expect to run 127.0.0.1, 127.0.0.3

- `datacenter` I expect run 127.0.0.2, 127.0.0.4

- `germany` I expect to run 127.0.0.1, 127.0.0.2

- `france` I expect to run 127.0.0.3, 127.0.0.4

Now, my issue:

- Europe works as expected

- on-premise works as expected

- datacenter works as expected

- germany runs 127.0.0.1, 127.0.0.2, 127.0.0.3, 127.0.0.4

- france runs 127.0.0.1, 127.0.0.2, 127.0.0.3, 127.0.0.4

After playing with it for a while, it seemed like this behaviour is gone once you don't have 2 on-premise or 2 datacenter children in germany and france.

It feels like while creating the host list it is just like 'alright, france, on-premise and datacenter are children ... get all the children/hosts of that group' ... after which he finds hosts in `datacenter` group that never belonged to France in the first place.

I was just wondering if I'm doing this wrong, or whether this is intended behaviour

[Brian Coca]

Those are not 'sub-groups' they are the same group. you are giving
them a parent/child relationship but all groups are 'global' so the
same name refers to the same group.
Only one 'on-premise' group exists, it is a chidl of france AND
germany, any hosts you assign to it at any point are always part of
that group.

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Brian Coca