Global variables file

[Ivaylo Bratoev]

I need to define truly global variables. I know about using the *ALL* group_vars but the variable there are not truly global. For example if *groupname* is defined in for the *ALL* group in group_vars this doesn't work:

- host: {{ groupname }}

  ...

My questions are: Is this expected to work? If not, can we think of truly global variables or this is not a supported scenario?

In my opinion it is OK to make the variables from the all group be available globally.

[Matt Martz]

What you probably want to use is 'vars_files' in a play and load in a YAML file.  Those vars are scoped more globally, and not tied to individual hosts or groups.

http://docs.ansible.com/playbooks_variables.html#variable-file-separation

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Matt Martz
@sivel
sivel.net

[Ivaylo Bratoev]

Yeah, that's how we do it in the moment. What I don't like is that *vars_files* has to be repeated on every play or include. A conventional way to include truly global variables would be great. What do you think about making from the *ALL* group truly global? I am no expert but it seems this would be completely backwards compatible.

[Michael DeHaan]

The group_vars/all file alongside inventory is loaded for everything, just at lower priority.

I use it frequently for global things.

Ansible in general likes it when you only have variables defined in one place - it's fine if you don't - but it's designed to be simple.  Thus as long as you don't need them to be super-high-priority, group_vars/all is a great place for that.

[Ivaylo Bratoev]

michael,

I use the same group_vars/all approach but it is *not* truly global. Example (from my first post):

playbook.yml :

- host: {{ groupname }}
  tasks:
    - name: test
      raw: ls

inventory/group_vars/all :

groupname: localhost

1. If I run *ansible-playbook -i inventory playbook.yml* - this fails with no hosts matched because {{ groupname }} is undefined on host level.
2. If I run *ansible-playbook -i inventory playbook.yml --extra-vars "groupname=localhost"* - this work as expected because groupname defined on command line is trully global.

Do you think that the first scenario should work as well? Can we consider this a bug or is this by design?

[Michael DeHaan]

This is not a thing, but if you were going to hardcode it, you could hardcode it like 

--extra-vars "@vars.yml"

Ansible will fail if the variable is undefined, so there'd be no worry of leaving if off.

[Ivaylo Bratoev]

Yeap, that's another solution I am aware of but I think it would be cleaner to have global variables declared conventionally. The situation right now is - if you want truly global variables, you should pass them on the command line.

That's just my opinion. Definitely this is not a showstopper just a minor workaround ;)

[Strahinja Kustudić]

I also needed global variables from time to time as well. Maybe we could add something like global_vars/ or something like that?

Or even better allow vars_file to be included on the playbook level, so it is automatically used in all plays of the playbook, that would remove the need for -e "@vars.yml".

[Michael DeHaan]

Sorry, this isn't going to be a thing.

We don't want to introduce more levels of variable features at this time and would like to keep them well managed.

[Strahinja Kustudić]

But what is a problem with vars_files being defined on top of a playbook? It should work the same as if we added the same vars_files to all plays, I don't see a downside to that and it should probably be even easy to implement it.

[Ivaylo Bratoev]

Alternatively, we can make variables for the *all* group to be *truly* global and not introduce any new variables sources ;)

For me this would be a nice addition but it is not critical. I am OK with not doing anything for the moment.

[Strahinja Kustudić]

Changing how group_vars/all works could possibly introduce a lot of problems to old playbooks and plays, but making it possible to set vars_files on playbook level won't introduce any, since it wasn't possible before.

Strahinja Kustudić | Lead System Engineer | Nordeus

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[Michael DeHaan]

Indeed, we don't want to keep moving precedence controls around.

as such, we will not be making any changes.