Recently I was asked how while the code for the copy module doesn't have anything about file ownership in it, how it still works.
The answer is there is code in Runner that calls the file module automatically after the copy module. In other words, it has special hard-coded handling, because copy
was kind of fundamental.
However, this should really be opened up to all modules for sharing purposes.
Here is a ticket about how to make the "call this file module after this other module" logic can be unified in Runner.py.
Once this is done, which I'm going to do eventually, we'll be able to offer the ability for any module to reuse the logic of the file module
for setting ownership bits without having to write any new code for it.
And any module can use this, regardless of implementation language.
https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/635
(This is all independent of the module code sharing exercise -- same theme though)
--Michael