# Proposal for two fact modules, thoughts?

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/proposal-for-two-fact-modules-thoughts/16018>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Tags:** windows\
**Created:** [August 22, 2014, 7:15pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/proposal-for-two-fact-modules-thoughts/16018 "2014-08-22T19:15:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![J\_Dav](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@J\_Dav](https://forum.ansible.com/u/J_Dav)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2014, 7:15pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/proposal-for-two-fact-modules-thoughts/16018/1 "2014-08-22T19:15:03Z")

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Internally, a requirement has been brought forth to be able to pull a list of all software installed on a given server, be it Windows or Linux.

I’ll be developing a custom fact module that essentially returns a ‘fact’ formatted version of dpkg -l for linux boxes and a similar thing with windows.

Is this something that would be useful for ansible-core? My initial though is for a windows\_software and a linux\_software module. Or perhaps even Pkg\_facts module.

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**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:** [August 22, 2014, 8:05pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/proposal-for-two-fact-modules-thoughts/16018/2 "2014-08-22T20:05:13Z")

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This should be done in the individual package modules as “state=list”.

We have some provision for this in a few places, though the structure could likely use standardization.

–Michael

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**Author:** ![J\_Dav](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@J\_Dav](https://forum.ansible.com/u/J_Dav)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2014, 11:03pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/proposal-for-two-fact-modules-thoughts/16018/3 "2014-08-22T23:03:30Z")

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Yep, that makes sense, I can start working on that. What do you mean by ‘we have some provision for this in a few places’?

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**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:** [August 22, 2014, 11:05pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/proposal-for-two-fact-modules-thoughts/16018/4 "2014-08-22T23:05:27Z")

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Like yum supported a state=list.

Though we’ve undocumented that. Maybe I’m misremembering.

In any case, I think the best thing to do would be to first come up with a proposed format for the data structure.

Speaking of which, ansible-devel is probably the right forum for that, since this is more about user questions, should you wish to post there in the future.

It’s abit more about the forward-looking development of ansible, API things, how do I build X, and all things that do not exist but could be 🙂