Possible Documentation Error (or bug) Regarding --extra-vars

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Using Ansible 1.3.4

According to the docs, this is the precedence:

* -e variables always win
* then comes "most everything else"
* then comes variables defined in inventory
* then "role defaults", which are the most "defaulty" and lose in priority to everything.

I am finding this is true except in the case of of variables imported via vars_files. So given the following play in a playbook someplay.yml:

---
- hosts: all
  remote_user: root
  vars:
    favcolor: blue
  vars_files:
    - /vars/external_vars.yml
  tasks:
  - name: this is just a placeholder
    command: /bin/echo foo

And the following in /vars/external_vars.yml:

---
favfood: pizza

And I invoke the playbook with:

ansible-playbook someplay.yml -e '{"favfood":"bacon","favcolor":"bacon"}'

I end up with favfood=pizza, favcolor=bacon. The actual order is:

  1. variables in external files that are referenced with vars_files
  2. -e
  3. everything else (playbook vars, roles/vars, inventory vars, roles/defaults, etc…)

There is a closed issue here that seems to indicate that this behavior is correct and that the documentation is wrong. However the issue is from some time ago - so which is it now?