apt result is changed incorrectly?

[Barry Kaplan]

I am running apt with a wildcard. The package is not being installed/updated, but task is marked as changed. Is this is a bug or how I should expect apt to work with a wildcard.

ansible❯ ansible --version
ansible 2.6.5

    - name: Install python
      apt:
        name: python2.7='2.7.14-2ubuntu1~14.04.york1'
        state: present
        update_cache: yes
      register: _apt_python
    - debug: var=_apt_python
    - fail:

TASK [debug] **************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
ok: [10.11.140.238] => {
    "_apt_python": {
        "cache_update_time": 1540395343,
        "cache_updated": true,
        "changed": true,
        "diff": {},
        "failed": false,
        "stderr": "",
        "stderr_lines": [],
        "stdout": "Reading package lists...\nBuilding dependency tree...\nReading state information...\npython2.7 is already the newest version.\n0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 120 not upgraded.\n",
        "stdout_lines": [
            "Reading package lists...",
            "Building dependency tree...",
            "Reading state information...",
            "python2.7 is already the newest version.",
            "0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 120 not upgraded."
        ]
    }
}

[Barry Kaplan]

Sorry, posted the wrong version expression

    - name: Install python
      apt:

        name: python2.7='2.7.14*'

[Barry Kaplan]

I posted the non-wildcard version above. But that too marks the task as changed. Which then is very different from what I would expect.

[Vladimir Botka]

You asked apt to update the cache

     update_cache: yes

The cache was updated and the task was flagged "changed".