# Arbitrary environment and proxy support implemented **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Project\ **Created:** [February 10, 2013, 6:16pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/arbitrary-environment-and-proxy-support-implemented/12326 "2013-02-10T18:16:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2013, 6:16pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/arbitrary-environment-and-proxy-support-implemented/12326/1 "2013-02-10T18:16:05Z")
I just implemented the ability to pass arbitrary environments to any task. Currently there is no support to set this for an entire \*play\* though that's quite easy to do and then we can just merge the hashes together (probably coming soon). Anyway, the usefulness for this is as follows. Suppose you have packages in an internal company repo and you have packages in an external repo that you have to go through a proxy to get through. For one, you have to set http\_proxy. For another, you do not. How do you do this with ansible? Relying on the user's shell environment is a gross hack, and you don't want to HAVE to use the shell module either. Ideally you should just be able to use yum and apt and pass along whatever environment variables you want. So, that's what I've enabled. It works for every single client side module (it has no meaning for server side modules at this time, but it won't yell at you if you try). The example shown uses "vars", but I think this would be super ideal to put in things like "group\_vars/your\_location\_group" and so on, such that all systems in the same group get the same environment variables. Remember to engage environment on the tasks that need them -- it is not automatically assigned to all hosts. Check out the example below -- comments welcome -- and it's already available in the tree: ---
**Author:** ![jpmens1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jpmens1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/jpmens1)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2013, 7:39pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/arbitrary-environment-and-proxy-support-implemented/12326/2 "2013-02-10T19:39:53Z")
> I just implemented the ability to pass arbitrary environments to any > task. W00T!         -JP ---
**Author:** ![Lorin\_Hochstein1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce73a5/32.png) [@Lorin\_Hochstein1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Lorin_Hochstein1)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2013, 7:46pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/arbitrary-environment-and-proxy-support-implemented/12326/3 "2013-02-10T19:46:37Z")
Yay! That means I can avoid the ugly hack I was using to set the locale when installing postgres. Lorin ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Theunissen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/898d66/32.png) [@Mark\_Theunissen](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Mark_Theunissen)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2013, 8:39pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/arbitrary-environment-and-proxy-support-implemented/12326/4 "2013-02-10T20:39:23Z")
This is great, thanks Michael! ---
**Author:** ![VK1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bbce88/32.png) [@VK1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/VK1)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2013, 5:28am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/arbitrary-environment-and-proxy-support-implemented/12326/5 "2013-02-11T05:28:38Z")
> I just implemented the ability to pass arbitrary environments to any > task.   ... > Suppose you have packages in an internal company repo and you have > packages in an external repo that you have to go through a proxy to > get through. > For one, you have to set http\_proxy. For another, you do not. How > do you do this with ansible? > Ideally you should just be able to use yum and apt and pass along > whatever environment variables you want. I am fairly new to ansible, and this is one of the first issues I ran into, so I was about to ask. Perfect timing 🕶 One sublety though: we already populate a local config file of shell-sourceable vars on each client with this proxy info, via other automation. So that's read by existing scripts that setup the shell environment before calling yum. Would it be possible to have this option as well (source specific client config file into environment as an option to each module)? If it's already possible, excuse my ignorance ... I realize this brings up shell vs. non-shell modules, but I'm not sure how this is implemented. ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2013, 1:03pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/arbitrary-environment-and-proxy-support-implemented/12326/6 "2013-02-11T13:03:55Z")
I would much rather have the environment be explicit from the tool than rely of pushing via a shell source file. Obviously if you want to execute a source statement or a subshell with the shell module that's fine, but we're not going to make that easier. It's much better if we model the high level concept than the low level concept, and a systems management tool \*really\* shouldn't depend on the user setup to decide how it is going to manage a machine -- it's definitions of that should be absolute, so it's more reliable that way.