Nice alternative to 'tags' for restricting change scope in a playbook

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Hi All

First off, I LOVE ansible, its awesome! Really didn’t like puppet when I tried it.

Just wanted to share a nice pattern I found for making it easy to run only part of a playbook, without having to remember which tags to use with the --tags option. (apologies if something similar has been posted before!)

With the below code at the top of the playbook, when you run it with ansible-playbook, you are first presented with an options menu asking you what you want to do :slight_smile:

  • name: My awesome playbook with options menu :slight_smile:

vars_prompt:
update_option: |
This playbook updates LIVE SYSTEMS. Use with caution!

Please enter one of the following options to perform the update:
app_update - check / update application software only
nginx - check / update nginx configuration
backup - check / update backup configuration
all - check / update all items

Or press CTRL+C to Cancel!

roles:

  • { role: my_app_role, when: “update_option in [‘app_update’, ‘all’]” }
  • { role: my_app_other_role, when: “update_option in [‘app_update’, ‘all’]” }
  • { role: nginx, when: “update_option in [‘nginx’, ‘all’]” }
  • { role: app_backup, when: “update_option in [‘backup’, ‘all’]” }

Cheers all!

Russell Briggs
(Junari Ltd)