Better warnings when running a module against the wrong host operating system

Project Discussions
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1

Consider e.g. ansible.builtin.stat vs ansible.windows.win_stat.

The former will fail with a pretty esoteric error if it’s trying to run on a Windows host.

Presumably ansible-playbook has enough information to know that it won’t work?

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2

If you gather_facts (which is true by default) then yes, the system is “aware” of which OS a target is running.

3

Argh, but the galaxy.yml doesn’t have a field for OS support.

4

There are many problems with trying to do this

  • There is no set metadata to say this module works on x platform(s)
  • How do you define a platform, macOS, Linux, Unix, Posix, something else?
  • How do you guarantee that fact gathering is enabled and this fact has been gathered
  • We can’t hardcode extensions to specific platforms as either non-AnsiballZ .py modules may work or future support might be enabled for running on different platforms

All in all it’s a difficult problem, the best we can do right now is make sure the documentation reflects what platforms the module can run on.