# Feature RFC: allow task failures to trigger non-zero exit codes **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Project\ **Tags:** ansible-project\ **Created:** [September 14, 2012, 8:47pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/feature-rfc-allow-task-failures-to-trigger-non-zero-exit-codes/11894 "2012-09-14T20:47:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **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:** [September 14, 2012, 8:47pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/feature-rfc-allow-task-failures-to-trigger-non-zero-exit-codes/11894/1 "2012-09-14T20:47:01Z")
The new command line option is not something I want. Why not just return non-zero if any host has failures? Both ansible and ansible-playbook should be included, and it shouldn't require any changes to the core. ---
**Author:** ![Brice\_Burgess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d2c977/32.png) [@Brice\_Burgess](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brice_Burgess)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2012, 8:56pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/feature-rfc-allow-task-failures-to-trigger-non-zero-exit-codes/11894/2 "2012-09-14T20:56:30Z")
Michael, Thanks for the feedback. I thought the flexibility of specifying the number of host failures would be helpful/necessary for some scenarios. E.g. I could imagine an administrator that desires a non-zero exit if, any only if all hosts had failures. Does this make sense? As for not making any changes to core – I imagine that I’ve done this by modifying bin/ansible-playbook and am at a loss as to how to accomplish this without modifying this (or the bin/ansible) file. Can you point me in the right direction? ~ Brice ---
**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:** [September 14, 2012, 8:58pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/feature-rfc-allow-task-failures-to-trigger-non-zero-exit-codes/11894/3 "2012-09-14T20:58:24Z")
> Michael, > > Thanks for the feedback. I thought the flexibility of specifying the number > of host failures would be helpful/necessary for some scenarios. E.g. I could > imagine an administrator that desires a non-zero exit if, any only if all > hosts had failures. Does this make sense? Not really. > As for not making any changes to core -- I imagine that I've done this by > modifying bin/ansible-playbook and am at a loss as to how to accomplish this > without modifying this (or the bin/ansible) file. Can you point me in the > right direction? You misread. Modify /bin/ansible, and /bin/ansible-playbook, do NOT modify the source code. In other words, no new command line parameters, just iterate over the results. ---
**Author:** ![Brice\_Burgess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d2c977/32.png) [@Brice\_Burgess](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brice_Burgess)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2012, 8:58pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/feature-rfc-allow-task-failures-to-trigger-non-zero-exit-codes/11894/4 "2012-09-14T20:58:25Z")
Ack forgot to answer… ---
**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:** [September 14, 2012, 9:01pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/feature-rfc-allow-task-failures-to-trigger-non-zero-exit-codes/11894/5 "2012-09-14T21:01:29Z")
> Wouldn't this potentially break backwards compatibility? I imagine some > production scripts pre this merge will now exit 1 vs. 0. No, if anything, it's a bugfix. ---
**Author:** ![Brice\_Burgess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d2c977/32.png) [@Brice\_Burgess](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brice_Burgess)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2012, 9:29pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/feature-rfc-allow-task-failures-to-trigger-non-zero-exit-codes/11894/6 "2012-09-14T21:29:19Z")
Michael, Got it. I think I’ll maintain my patch – as the above is such a trivial modification && doesn’t provide the flexibility we’ll eventually need. If you want me to submit a pull request I will. Having ‘all’ in the command line option will become necessary for us in the future when we start dealing with multiple (100s) of webservers. I imagine a task failing on one or two of them for some reason or another [such as failed provisioning or unresponsiveness], but not on all. All would indicate a problem with the playbook / task itself. The command line option also doesn’t break backwards compat which I wouldn’t want to be responsible for 😉 ~ Brice ---
**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:** [September 14, 2012, 10:21pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/feature-rfc-allow-task-failures-to-trigger-non-zero-exit-codes/11894/7 "2012-09-14T22:21:09Z")
I strongly disagree that this is a "break". I do agree that your use case is a little weird, and probably should be it's own API script.