Template fails with diff if dest=directory w/o trailing / - shall provide better error message

[Jakub Holy]

The following will fail in Ansible 1.5 but only when run with --diff:

---

#  broken_template_diff.yml

- hosts: all

  gather_facts: False

  sudo: False

  tasks:

  - template: src=mytemplate.txt dest=/tmp   # BROKEN

  #- template: src=mytemplate.txt dest=/tmp/ # WORKING

When run with

ansible-playbook -vi local broken_template_diff.yml --diff # I could also add -C here

this will fail with

fatal: [localhost] => failed to parse: Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "/home/vagrant/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1394180980.94-199465317382554/slurp", line 1144, in <module>

    main()

  File "/home/vagrant/.ansible/tmp/ansible-tmp-1394180980.94-199465317382554/slurp", line 67, in main

    data = base64.b64encode(file(source).read())

IOError: [Errno 21] Is a directory: '/tmp'

When run without --diff or after adding the trailing /, it will work.

In this particular case it actually tells me what is the problem but when I run it with my slightly different production configuration and against CentOS 5.9 (with an older Python) it is even worse because I get

fatal: [10.0.2.2] => failed to parse: SUDO-SUCCESS-advisvcbctshnxbofoyvoppteorclbaf

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "/tmp/ansible-tmp-1394181207.71-130165043237097/slurp", line 1144, in ?

    main()

  File "/tmp/ansible-tmp-1394181207.71-130165043237097/slurp", line 67, in main

    data = base64.b64encode(file(source).read())

IOError: [Errno 21] Is a directory

- notice it does not tell me the name of the path that is directory even though template+diff does not expect that. So it might seems that it is the source that is a directory, which is pretty confusing.

SUMMARY

1. --diff should not fail when there is missing the trailing slash in dest=/path/to/directory (since non-diff does not fail either) or it should at least provide much better error message
2. Under CentOS 5.9 (<=> Python 2.4) the error message does not contain the directory's name, which makes it very confusing

Should I open an issue for #1?

Thank you!

[Jakub Holy]

I have opened https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/6469 for this