Ansible 2.0 Deprecation in "when:" conditional.

[Manuel Jiménez]

Hi!

I have a role that clean my /etc/cron.d , /etc/cron.daily, etc... and installs new crons that I have defined in the role. For this duty I've do a simple but powerfull playbook but in version 2.0 instead of skeep a steep, I see a deprecation warning.

Example:

## LOOK IF PLACEHOLDER FILE EXISTS AND REGISTER IN A VAR

  - stat:

   path=/etc/cron.d/placeholder

   register: placeholdercrond

   tags: ["cron.all", "cron.d"]

 

## IF NOT EXISTS, LIST ALL FILES AND STORE THEM IN A VAR

  - shell: ls -1 /etc/cron.d

    register: crond

    when: placeholdercrond.stat.exists == False

    tags: ["cron.all", "cron.d"]

 

## DELETE EVERY FILE IF LAST COMMAND WHERE TRUE BECAUSE crond VAR HAS VALUES

  - file:

   path=/etc/cron.d/{{ item }}

    state=absent

    with_items: crond.stdout_lines

    when: crond.changed == True

    tags: ["cron.all", "cron.d"]

 

 

- WHEN NOT PLACEHOLDER FILE: PLAYBOOK RUN OK

- WHEN THERE IS A PLACEHOLDER FILE: PLAYBOOK SHOWS A DEPRECATION, FUTURE ERROR IN FILE MODULE

 

 

PLAY ***************************************************************************

 

TASK [setup] *******************************************************************

 

TASK [cron : stat] *************************************************************

ok: [testserver]

 

TASK [cron : command] **********************************************************

ok: [testserver]

 

TASK [cron : file] *************************************************************

[DEPRECATION WARNING]: Skipping task due to undefined attribute, in the future this will be a fatal error.. This feature will be removed in a future release. Deprecation warnings can be disabled by setting

deprecation_warnings=False in ansible.cfg.

This is because {{ item }} is empty, but this steep should be skipped because the when: condition is not meeted.

Any ideas?

[Manuel Jiménez]

I suggest to add an output when any task is skipped because of empy with_ loop with a message like:

[skipped]: skipped due to no items

Cheers!