# Sychronize module from Tim Appnel merged! **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Project\ **Created:** [August 10, 2013, 11:05pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/sychronize-module-from-tim-appnel-merged/13279 "2013-08-10T23:05:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/da6949/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan2](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan2)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2013, 11:05pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/sychronize-module-from-tim-appnel-merged/13279/1 "2013-08-10T23:05:26Z")
I know a lot of people were waiting for this one and wanted to pass along that this is now merged into 1.3 devel. My testing of it was not comprehensive, I’m sure, so please have at. Glad to see this one. I haven’t pushed doc site rebuilds just yet, so here is the output from “ansible-doc synchronize”. I think you will all agree it is some really nice syntax. [root@localhost ansible]# ansible-doc synchronize > SYNCHRONIZE This is a wrapper around rsync. Of course you could just use the command action to call rsync yourself, but you also have to add a fair number of boilerplate options and host facts. You still may need to call rsync directly via `command' or `shell’ depending on your use case. The synchronize action is meant to do common things with `rsync’ easily. It does not provide access to the full power of rsync, but does make most invocations easier to follow. Options (= is mandatory): - delete Delete files that don’t exist (after transfer, not before) in the `src’ path. (Choices: yes, no) = dest Path on the destination machine that will be synchronized from the source; The path can be absolute or relative. - mode Specify the direction of the synchroniztion. In push mode the localhost or delgate is the source; In pull mode the remote host in context is the source. (Choices: push, pull) - rsync\_path Specify the rsync command to run on the remote machine. See `–rsync-path’ on the rsync man page. = src Path on the source machine that will be synchronized to the destination; The path can be absolute or relative. - verbosity An integer controlling the amount of information returned during processing. See the `-v, --verbose' option of the rsync man page for details. If verbosity is not defined or a value of 0 is assumed, the `–quiet’ option is passed and information is supressed. # Synchronization of src on the control machien to dest on the remote hosts synchronize: src=some/relative/path dest=/some/absolute/path # Synchronization of two paths both on the control machine local\_action: synchronize src=some/relative/path dest=/some/absolute/path # Synchronization of src on the inventory host to the dest on the localhost in pull mode synchronize: mode=pull src=some/relative/path dest=/some/absolute/path # Synchronization of src on delegate host to dest on the current inventory host synchronize: \> src=some/relative/path dest=/some/absolute/path delegate\_to: delegate.host # Synchronize and delete files in dest on the remote host that are not found in src of localhost. synchronize: src=some/relative/path dest=/some/absolute/path delete=yes # Synchronize and return verbose information from the rsync transfer. synchronize: src=some/relative/path dest=/some/absolute/path verbosity=1 # Synchronize using an alternate rsync command synchronize: src=some/relative/path dest=/some/absolute/path rsync\_path=“sudo rsync” ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/da6949/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan2](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan2)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2013, 8:23pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/sychronize-module-from-tim-appnel-merged/13279/2 "2013-08-11T20:23:24Z")
Apparently I had merged this to a local branch. Now merged into the public devel branch. If you were looking previously and were confused, this is why 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Timothy\_Appnel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Timothy\_Appnel](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Timothy_Appnel)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2013, 9:47pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/sychronize-module-from-tim-appnel-merged/13279/3 "2013-08-11T21:47:51Z")
This module has been awhile in the making and took a couple of commits to support it’s function. There are a couple of enhancements I thought of during this last push I want to work in. I didn’t want to make testing that module too much of a moving target. The first is support of the rsync dry-run option thru Ansible’s check mode. Pretty straight forward really. Probably should have implemented it. Implementation of the suppress MOTD option in rsync is another. That’s a fairly new option in rsync. I found at the day job we don’t have such a version that will support it and a very verbose MOTD that makes for some really noisy responses. rsync just dies if you use the option and it’s not supported. I thought of running rsync with the option and if it dies try again without it. If it dies the because of the MOTD option set a flag as an ansible\_fact for next time. That seems a bit too hacky. I thought of checking the version of rsync also but determining the version of rsync is pretty hacky also. They dump out a lot more than version when you ask it. So I’d have to parse that put of the response and set an ansible\_fact for next time. There was also a request to detect any changes rsync actually when run and reply ok or changed accordingly. Again rsync isn’t terribly helpful with integrating with an app like Ansible and would require greping for patterns in the response. I don’t mind attempting these – I am not sure there isn’t a better way or if greping stdout is acceptable in the core. (BTW: I haven’t thought to check other modules to if and how they handle this.) Thoughts? ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/da6949/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan2](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan2)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 12:18am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/sychronize-module-from-tim-appnel-merged/13279/4 "2013-08-12T00:18:09Z")
Thanks for the follow up. To answer that last question, searching stdout in Python is entirely fair game. There’s a CLI function in module\_common we use for most executions that will get you output back. More or less a wrapper around subprocess with some extra error checking: ```auto def run_command(self, args, check_rc=False, close_fds=False, executable=None, data=None, binary_data=False): ''' Execute a command, returns rc, stdout, and stderr. args is the command to run If args is a list, the command will be run with shell=False. Otherwise, the command will be run with shell=True when args is a string. Other arguments: - check_rc (boolean) Whether to call fail_json in case of non zero RC. Default is False. - close_fds (boolean) See documentation for subprocess.Popen(). Default is False. - executable (string) See documentation for subprocess.Popen(). Default is None. ''' ``` ---
**Author:** ![Smoothify](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Smoothify](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Smoothify)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2013, 7:05pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/sychronize-module-from-tim-appnel-merged/13279/5 "2013-08-22T19:05:11Z")
I realise this module is still in a state of flux, and currently out devel branch. Anyhow, i’ve been working on it here as i do need it, still the other issues remain, but using local\_action, I do have the change detection working. I found the simplest way was to turn --quiet off and pass in an --out-format= flag to rsync. I used a pattern such as --out-format=‘%i %n%L’ which makes rsync return a list of every modification, prefixed by . Then using run\_command, i simply check for the existance of and return if changed or not. Of course could be anything, but using the out-format seemed most convenient rather than trying to decipher the default -i flag format. I will test this further, and once the synchorinize module is back in the branch i will create a pull request. ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/da6949/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan2](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan2)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2013, 9:31pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/sychronize-module-from-tim-appnel-merged/13279/6 "2013-08-22T21:31:52Z")
It seemed to have other issues about not running locally when it needed to as well. Also I’m not positive you _do_ need it, because you can still shell out to rsync? Can you elaborate on usage? I agree it would be very nice to have this abstraction here though, and I still want this.