# per-environment variables **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Project\ **Created:** [May 1, 2014, 9:40am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/per-environment-variables/15128 "2014-05-01T09:40:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dick\_Davies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Dick\_Davies](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Dick_Davies)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 9:40am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/per-environment-variables/15128/1 "2014-05-01T09:40:22Z")
I'm developing an ansible playbook in Vagrant and then applying it to a customer environment. Getting pretty far by using a single playbook (site.yml) and setting per-environment variables in different inventory files. dev\_hosts = my dev. VMs live\_hosts = customer VM stack then i can run ansible-playbook -i (pick one) site.yml and things by and large work great. One problem I keep hitting is the 'live' environment needs everything to go via a proxy. live\_hosts has: .... [all:vars] http\_proxy=[http://custproxy:8080](http://custproxy:8080) .... and that's absent from dev\_hosts. I use that to template /etc/profile.d/proxy.sh, so curl etc. are pre-set to use it. I'ts easy to do conditional logic in that template. I'd like all the Ansible tasks that support an environment: field (git / get\_url / etc) to only have one set if that var is populated. I can't just blindly set it or the tasks end up running with a proxy of nil/null/'' . But I can't just add this to the inventory: .... [all:vars] http\_proxy=[http://custproxy:8080](http://custproxy:8080) proxy\_env:   http\_proxy: {{http\_proxy}} .... because it just allows key=var style definitions. Where's the earliest I can set this up? ---
**Author:** ![Tomasz\_Kontusz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@Tomasz\_Kontusz](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Tomasz_Kontusz)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 3:37pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/per-environment-variables/15128/2 "2014-05-01T15:37:37Z")
Dnia czw, 1 maj 2014, 11:40:22 Dick Davies pisze: > I'm developing an ansible playbook in Vagrant and then > applying it to a customer environment. Getting pretty far > by using a single playbook (site.yml) and setting per-environment > variables in different inventory files. Sounds like a bit of abuse of the inventory - I think it's only meant for listing hosts and connection details. > dev\_hosts = my dev. VMs > live\_hosts = customer VM stack > > then i can run > > ansible-playbook -i (pick one) site.yml > > and things by and large work great. > > One problem I keep hitting is the 'live' environment needs everything > to go via a proxy. live\_hosts has: > > .... > [all:vars] > http\_proxy=[http://custproxy:8080](http://custproxy:8080) > .... > > and that's absent from dev\_hosts. > > I use that to template /etc/profile.d/proxy.sh, > so curl etc. are pre-set to use it. I'ts easy to do conditional > logic in that template. > > I'd like all the Ansible tasks that support an environment: field > (git / get\_url / etc) to only have one set if that var is populated. > > I can't just blindly set it or the tasks end up running with a proxy > of nil/null/'' . > > But I can't just add this to the inventory: > > .... > [all:vars] > http\_proxy=[http://custproxy:8080](http://custproxy:8080) > proxy\_env: >    http\_proxy: {{http\_proxy}} > .... > > because it just allows key=var style definitions. > > Where's the earliest I can set this up? I'm not sure if that's the right way, but for environment-specific variables I'm using play's vars\_files. vagrant\_inventory: [all:vars] environment\_name=vagrant site.yml: - hosts: some\_group    vars\_files:      - vars/{{ environment\_name }}.yml This way I have less clutter in inventory, and I can easily see the environment's global settings. It's also pretty handy for usage with Vault, by adding "- secrets/{{ environment\_name }}.yml" there (and as secrets for Vagrant aren't that secret, that gives you an index of required secrets too :-)) ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan1)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 9:21pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/per-environment-variables/15128/3 "2014-05-01T21:21:09Z")
“Sounds like a bit of abuse of the inventory - I think it’s only meant for listing hosts and connection details.” I strongly disagree. Group based variables are quite useful and having a group\_vars/production and group\_vars/stage can be a great way to organize things. ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Davies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Dick\_Davies](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Dick_Davies)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2014, 8:57am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/per-environment-variables/15128/4 "2014-05-03T08:57:55Z")
In fairness, I probably am Doing It Wrong in some respects - I don't have prod/dev groups in this case, we're using a different inventory for prod and dev. The alternative would be to have [prod\_mongos] , [prod\_mongors], [dev\_mongos] etc. etc. in the inventory which seems a bit cut n pasty to me. With the 2 inventory approach, I can have the same groups across environments that differ only in FQDNs and number of members, and then an [all:vars] to hold environment-wide 'globals' (NTP settings, proxy, ansible\_ssh\* settings etc). For the record : I got this working cleanly (to my mind at least ) thanks to @drybjed on IRC pointing out set\_fact. I have a roles/proxyenv/tasks/main.yml applied to all hosts that mpopulates a proxy\_env var using set\_fact + when and then all our yum/get\_url/gem etc. always have an environment: proxy\_env tacked onto them. Environments that don't need to use a proxy simply don't set one in their inventory, and so that proxy\_env dict is empty for them.