# looking for feedback on an idea for a PR **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Developer\ **Tags:** galaxy-ng\ **Created:** [March 28, 2017, 4:24pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/looking-for-feedback-on-an-idea-for-a-pr/24085 "2017-03-28T16:24:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![michaelconlon0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6bbea6/32.png) [@michaelconlon0](https://forum.ansible.com/u/michaelconlon0)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2017, 4:24pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/looking-for-feedback-on-an-idea-for-a-pr/24085/1 "2017-03-28T16:24:54Z")
At my company, we currently use a patch file to get this result, and it’s been working great for over a year…so I figured it might be worth submitting a PR. However, I’m not sure how it would be received from a design perspective. Here’s the change: We got tired of having dozens of main.yml files open in our editors (and buried as a single file inside of a directory), so we made a patch that allows the default loading mechanism of these files in roles: tasks/main.yml defaults/main.yml handlers/main.yml meta/main.yml to also load these files: tasks.yml defaults.yml handlers.yml meta.yml This makes it a lot easier to navigate and edit files in our ansible project. No more opening directories just to look at that one main.yml file inside. No more cycling through all the main.yml tabs in our editor to find the tasks file we were just working on. This role: roles/dnsmasq/ ├── defaults │ └── main.yml ├── handlers │ └── main.yml ├── meta │ └── main.yml ├── tasks │ └── main.yml └── templates ├── dns.conf.j2 ├── logrotate.j2 └── supervisord.j2 now becomes: roles/dnsmasq/ ├── defaults.yml ├── handlers.yml ├── meta.yml ├── tasks.yml └── templates ├── dns.conf.j2 ├── logrotate.j2 └── supervisord.j2 Our patch doesn’t break anything about the standard functionality of roles, so we can just as easily use roles downloaded from Galaxy. So…thoughts? Worth a PR? ---
**Author:** ![sivel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/sivel/32/1198_2.png) [@sivel](https://forum.ansible.com/u/sivel)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2017, 4:28pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/looking-for-feedback-on-an-idea-for-a-pr/24085/2 "2017-03-28T16:28:22Z")
Historically speaking, we have turned down all PRs and issues that wish to make this change. ---
**Author:** ![michaelconlon0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6bbea6/32.png) [@michaelconlon0](https://forum.ansible.com/u/michaelconlon0)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2017, 4:35pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/looking-for-feedback-on-an-idea-for-a-pr/24085/3 "2017-03-28T16:35:17Z")
Thanks, I had a feeling that was the case, which was why I didn’t go ahead and create the PR. I’m sure the reasoning is out there somewhere, but if you could link me to it, I’d appreciate it. I’m trying to understand why exactly it gets turned down, especially when it’s not breaking existing convention. This change makes things so much more readable… ---
**Author:** ![sivel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/sivel/32/1198_2.png) [@sivel](https://forum.ansible.com/u/sivel)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2017, 4:39pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/looking-for-feedback-on-an-idea-for-a-pr/24085/4 "2017-03-28T16:39:48Z")
My quick search on github lead me to [https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/4359](https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/4359) It mentions “discussed in the past” but I didn’t immediately find that discussion. There may actually be discussions on this mailing list, I’m unsure. ---
**Author:** ![michaelconlon0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6bbea6/32.png) [@michaelconlon0](https://forum.ansible.com/u/michaelconlon0)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2017, 5:07pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/looking-for-feedback-on-an-idea-for-a-pr/24085/5 "2017-03-28T17:07:09Z")
Thanks for the link! ---
**Author:** ![Scott\_Mcdermott](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@Scott\_Mcdermott](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Scott_Mcdermott)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2017, 5:11pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/looking-for-feedback-on-an-idea-for-a-pr/24085/6 "2017-03-28T17:11:42Z")
This idea has been knocked down many times, for no good reason. I have previously found, when searching on this topic, many occurrences of the original author (DeHaan) in forums and issues basically just saying "no" and the rationale was always "because I said so" or "because I said so before." Any attempts to argue were met with "this is a dead horse. Stop beating it." If you dig, you'll see the claim that it's more "scalable" to use the full layout, but all the counter-arguments -- that most/all roles only have single main.yml files in these dirs, that it makes people confused by the layout, that it makes editing more difficult, that it's superfluous structure in the vast majority of cases -- were just met with a dictate. Ansible can't be all things to all people, it was said. We follow conventions. That ship has sailed. Several of my colleagues have told me, when teaching them about Ansible -- and I have thought myself -- how silly it is to have all these directories with single files in them. Out of dozens of roles so far, I have only had occasion a few times to populate these directories with anything but single main.yml files. The documentation is always encouraging users to factorize our plays into roles, but well-factored roles will (almost by definition) be small and use single main.yml files in defaults/, tasks/, meta/, etc, so I find this contradictory. My guess is that the core development team still holds this opinion -- for whatever reason -- and this change will never happen. If you forked ansible with this patch (is it available btw?), I'd use your fork 🙂 I personally think it is the most inelegant aspect of ansible, but opinions differ... ---
**Author:** ![michaelconlon0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6bbea6/32.png) [@michaelconlon0](https://forum.ansible.com/u/michaelconlon0)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2017, 9:00pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/looking-for-feedback-on-an-idea-for-a-pr/24085/7 "2017-03-28T21:00:43Z")
Scott, I completely agree with you, and you put it extremely well. I’m baffled at the stubbornness that seems to run counter to the project’s own design goals. I don’t have a fork of ansible at this time, but I can share our patch with you now (this is based off of v2.2.1.0-1)…just copy the patch below to a local file and run patch -N \/ansible/lib/ansible/playbook/role/ **init**.py patch\_file.patch Here’s patch\_file.patch: \*\*\* ansible\_221/src/ansible/lib/ansible/playbook/role/ **init**.py 2017-03-28 10:46:37.000000000 -0500 — role\_init.py 2017-03-28 12:53:13.000000000 -0500