1.2.2 variable reference syntax

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1

Hello. I’m running Ansible 1.2.2 (seeing the below behavior on OSX and CentOS 6.4). My understanding is that in 1.2+, I can use {{ var }} syntax everywhere. In a role task I have this:

  • copy:
    src=“jdk-{{ oraclejdk_version }}-linux-amd64.rpm”
    dest=“{{ tmp_dir }}/jdk-{{ oraclejdk_version }}-linux-amd64.rpm”

The vars are specified in main.yml inside the same role. However, I get an error:

msg: Destination directory {{tmp_dir}} does not exist

If I change the “copy:” action to:

  • copy:
    src=“jdk-{{ oraclejdk_version }}-linux-amd64.rpm”
    dest=“${tmp_dir}/jdk-{{ oraclejdk_version }}-linux-amd64.rpm”

… the error goes away and all is well. Maybe this is a bug, okay, but I’m looking to find out if I’ve misunderstood the new syntax.

Thank you for any information.
-Scott

2

This is not how you do multiline copies. I’m not sure where you picked this up, but it looks like this if you want a line continuation.

  • copy: >
    src=“jdk-{{ oraclejdk_version }}-linux-amd64.rpm”
    dest=“{{ tmp_dir }}/jdk-{{ oraclejdk_version }}-linux-amd64.rpm”

Furthermore, the failure of your variable to evaluate is probably because the other variable didn’t substitute. Ansible probably couldn’t template something else on the line.

3

Thank you Michael. It was indeed the multi-line syntax error. Once I properly added the “copy: >” for multi-line, I was able to use the new variable syntax successfully.

It’s a little surprising that with incorrect multi-line syntax using the old variable syntax ${} masked the actual error. Regardless, I have a fix. Thanks for the fast reply.

4

This is not how you do multiline copies. I’m not sure where you picked this up, but it looks like this if you want a line continuation.

It was suggested in this thread:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/ansible-project/EDXIk3WM7vk/Rx6mibjQvrcJ

I think some more documentation on this would be great.