# \--start-at-task seems broken on 2.0.0-stable **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Project\ **Created:** [November 25, 2015, 9:22pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/start-at-task-seems-broken-on-2-0-0-stable/19857 "2015-11-25T21:22:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Brandon\_Heller](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Brandon\_Heller](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brandon_Heller)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2015, 9:22pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/start-at-task-seems-broken-on-2-0-0-stable/19857/1 "2015-11-25T21:22:39Z")
[prior post had a link in the title - if a mod can delete that post, would be great, thanks!] I’m having some issues with ansible 2.0.0-stable (b69942a), where --start-at-task can’t find the task with that name. I think a clue may be in --list-tasks, which doesn’t list task names for tasks defined as meta: [output from --list-tasks]: PLAY: #5 tasks: TASK: meta TASK: include tags=search,es\_worker TASK: meta TASK: meta When I run with --start-at-task for the last failed task from a run w/o --start-at-task, I see nothing run: PLAY \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* … PLAY RECAP \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* [return to console] Posting per the suggestion in this (closed) bug report, which seems to need reopening: [https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/11692](https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/11692) Has anyone else come across this? Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Brian\_Coca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6de8d8/32.png) [@Brian\_Coca](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brian_Coca)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 1:16am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/start-at-task-seems-broken-on-2-0-0-stable/19857/2 "2015-12-01T01:16:19Z")
the 'meta' tasks you see there might be the internal calls to `meta: refresh\_handlers` which don't normally have a name. List tasks in 2.0 shows these, they did not appear in previous versions. ---
**Author:** ![Brandon\_Heller](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Brandon\_Heller](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brandon_Heller)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 2:49am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/start-at-task-seems-broken-on-2-0-0-stable/19857/3 "2015-12-01T02:49:42Z")
Thanks Brian. I roughly binary searched and the behavior seems to have broken between Ansible code versions v1.9.4-1 and v2.0.0-0.1.alpha1. Before, --list-tasks would show individual tasks and no ‘meta’ tasks. At 2.0, it just shows a shorter list of meta tasks, which breaks --start-at-task. Unfortunately, that range is pretty big: ansible (2df6513f8d802a931e0fa88afa6dc019ba4bd6e6) 14091 $ git log --pretty=oneline v1.9.4-1…v2.0.0-0.1.alpha1 | wc -l **2336** Over two thousand commits. I’ll try to bin search it, since it’s a huge pain for me to debug large Ansible runs without --start-at-task. Brian, how should I report this to increase the chance that it gets acknowledged? It’s known broken since Jul 21: [https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/11692](https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/11692) … but I can’t reopen that bug. Should I report a new bug and link to the closed one, or can you reopen it? Thanks, Brandon ---
**Author:** ![Brian\_Coca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6de8d8/32.png) [@Brian\_Coca](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brian_Coca)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 2:54am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/start-at-task-seems-broken-on-2-0-0-stable/19857/4 "2015-12-01T02:54:33Z")
Closed bugs don’t normally get read. If you can provide a minimally reproducible test case, we can look into it. My tests show this feature working. ---
**Author:** ![Brandon\_Heller](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Brandon\_Heller](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brandon_Heller)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 3:03am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/start-at-task-seems-broken-on-2-0-0-stable/19857/5 "2015-12-01T03:03:33Z")
Brian, can you point me to the tests you’re running? As an update to the previous, I gave up on binary searching to find where the behavior changed; the issue is present at v2.0.0-0.1.alpha1~250 but before then I see a compilation issue where Ansible thinks quotes are missing. ---
**Author:** ![Brandon\_Heller](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Brandon\_Heller](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brandon_Heller)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 3:59am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/start-at-task-seems-broken-on-2-0-0-stable/19857/6 "2015-12-01T03:59:57Z")
**Here’s my minimal test case, which has one task.** The task comes from an include, which seems to be the issue. Yes, roles are great and we try to use them as much as possible, but our codebase has a number of places where includes are used to define tasks lists. Brian, please let me know what to do next. Thanks. **Files (common to both versions):** [19:50:41 Mon Nov 30] brandonh@brandonh-macbook.local ~/src/fwd/ops/ansible/fwd-ubuntu fwd-ubuntu (testing/alex/docker) 14366 $ cat site-simple.yml ---
**Author:** ![Brian\_Coca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6de8d8/32.png) [@Brian\_Coca](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brian_Coca)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 7:47am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/start-at-task-seems-broken-on-2-0-0-stable/19857/7 "2015-12-01T07:47:52Z")
My tests included a role and a bunch of debug tasks in 2 plays, all worked, what did not have is a task include. This is probably due to the new 'dynamic' nature of tasks includes in 2.0, the same reason those tasks don't appear in task lists. ---
**Author:** ![Brandon\_Heller](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Brandon\_Heller](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brandon_Heller)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 8:04am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/start-at-task-seems-broken-on-2-0-0-stable/19857/8 "2015-12-01T08:04:21Z")
> My tests included a role and a bunch of debug tasks in 2 plays, all > worked, what did not have is a task include. > > This is probably due to the new ‘dynamic’ nature of tasks includes in > 2.0, the same reason those tasks don’t appear in task lists. What do you think the correct behavior should be? I feel like includes should get “unrolled” to enable --start-at-task. But, if you’d have to dynamically execute most of a playlist to even get to task names, I kinda see why this functionality might get forgotten. Are you aware of any workarounds to enable debugging in the middle of a large playbook, outside of copious tags and/or commenting? Thanks, B ---
**Author:** ![Brian\_Coca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6de8d8/32.png) [@Brian\_Coca](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brian_Coca)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 8:16am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/start-at-task-seems-broken-on-2-0-0-stable/19857/9 "2015-12-01T08:16:32Z")
I think they should 'just work' TM, but this is not a simple one, having dynamic includes makes this an 'interesting' problem, checking with other devs trying to figure this out. ---
**Author:** ![Brandon\_Heller](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Brandon\_Heller](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brandon_Heller)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2015, 12:08am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/start-at-task-seems-broken-on-2-0-0-stable/19857/10 "2015-12-03T00:08:40Z")
Thanks Brian. Did you have a chance to talk to other devs? Is this a conversation I could join in? We’ve now switched internally to 2.0.0 but I’m finding a lot of debugging much slower, as I have to use a mix of tags and temporary commenting-out to get playbooks working. Thanks, -b ---
**Author:** ![Brian\_Coca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6de8d8/32.png) [@Brian\_Coca](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brian_Coca)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2015, 12:10am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/start-at-task-seems-broken-on-2-0-0-stable/19857/11 "2015-12-03T00:10:04Z")
Currently, this is the price we are paying for the dynamic 'task includes', we are looking for ways around this issue but have not found anything we are happy with yet. ---
**Author:** ![Brandon\_Heller](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Brandon\_Heller](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brandon_Heller)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 10:08pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/start-at-task-seems-broken-on-2-0-0-stable/19857/12 "2015-12-18T22:08:34Z")
–start-at-task seems to be fixed recently. Thanks, Ansible devs! This is a major improvement to my daily workflow 🙂