# clone roles for development.

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/clone-roles-for-development/26311>\
**Category:** Ansible Developer\
**Tags:** galaxy-ng\
**Created:** [December 16, 2017, 10:45am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/clone-roles-for-development/26311 "2017-12-16T10:45:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ljenkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/cc9497/32.png) [@ljenkin](https://forum.ansible.com/u/ljenkin)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2017, 10:45am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/clone-roles-for-development/26311/1 "2017-12-16T10:45:41Z")

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I am drafting up a proposal to solve the issue described here.  
[https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/20977](https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/20977)

In an environment where I work on dozens of roles, it would be handy to be able to use ansible-galaxy to set up for development. Particulalry when providing support to teams that find using submodules a challenge

This is something I expect only done as an option when creating a dev environment, I have added what it might look like below.

(ansible-env) [ljenkin@lapwork test\_play]$ ansible-galaxy install --help  
Usage: ansible-galaxy install [options] [-r FILE | role\_name(s)[,version] | scm+role\_repo\_url[,version] | tar\_file(s)]

Options:  
–clone If the role source is a git repo, checkout the role at  
the version specified, rather than converting to an archive.  
-f, --force Force overwriting an existing role  
…  
(ansible-env) [ljenkin@lapwork test\_play]$ ansible-galaxy install -r roles/requirements.yml -p ./roles --clone

Looking through the code and it looks simple enough, though some will require a bit more of a change than a simple option like this would imply.

What are peoples thoughts on this, is it useful and the best way for solving this problem?