I am trying to find out the best practice for writing modules that are composed of multiple config steps.
For example, a module when it executes with given input might go through a sequence of API requests, checking for errors at every step.
If at some intermediate step the return value is a 404 then the entire task is considered to have failed (json_exit(error message)).
Now because all the config steps up till the error have succeeded, the system is left in a new state that is neither the starting state nor the intended target state.
Is the only answer in this case to develop such modules with rollback built into them?
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/playbooks_blocks.html has some info about
the block/rescue/always construction, which can do a lot of what you're
talking about.
There's at least one significant bug with multiple blocks or tasks after
blocks, https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/20736 has more details.
Can be worked around, but good to be aware of.
-Josh (jbs@care.com)
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