jinja2 templated variables do not expand

[eray]

I am not sure if its my misuse of jinja within ansible, but I am seeing strange behavior from what would seem to be a typical use case for managing dynamic variables. As you can see from the code below, I am using the mysql_os variable to determine the list to select items from.  This may be the intended behavior, but I swear I have done this in the past.  I tested on 2.3, and 2.2 with the same results.

---

  - hosts: localhost

    connection: local

    vars:

      mysql_os: "el6"

      mysql_el6_base:

        - "MySQL-server-{{ mysql_os }}"

      mysql_el7_base:

        - "mysql-community-server-{{ mysql_os }}"

    tasks:

      - debug: msg="{{ item }}.x86_64.rpm"

        with_items:

          - "{{vars['mysql_' + mysql_os + '_base']}}"

Expected Result

TASK [debug] ******************************************************************************************************************

******

ok: [localhost] => (item=MySQL-server-el6) => {

    "item": "MySQL-server-el6",

    "msg": "MySQL-server-el6.x86_64.rpm"

}

Actual Result

TASK [debug] ******************************************************************************************************************

******

ok: [localhost] => (item=MySQL-server-{{ mysql_os }}) => {

    "item": "MySQL-server-{{ mysql_os }}",

    "msg": "MySQL-server-{{ mysql_os }}.x86_64.rpm"

}

Thanks

[mcso...@redhat.com]

If I remember correctly, it does not work, when you define a variable and try to use it in same "block" in this case vars:

Both mysql_os and mysql_el6_base are defined in vars, so when expanding mysql_el6_base the mysql_os is not yet defined.

And the solution I used was to separate them into multiple vars_files.