variable precedence

Archives Ansible Project
1

Working with roles I am trying to understand variable precedence a little better bases on this list from the manual.

on line 14 we have play vars_files.

That means an entriy like

vars_files: path/to/vars.yml or
vars_files: defaults.yml

inside the playbook that, later on, also lists the roles to run right?

I am asking because of …

  1. playbook group_vars/*
  2. playbook host_vars/*
  3. play vars_files
  1. & 10 are playbook, 14 is play. I assume that means the same (vars mentioned or linked to in the playbook), or is there any differenece?
2

playbook reffers to the file that contains the plays, plays refer to
the ansible object that maps hosts to tasks. while many use the terms
interchangably, they are not really the same thing.

playbook: a list of plays (normally a file)
play: mappijng of hosts to tasks
role: groupsing of tasks/templates/vars and files for reuse
task: an action to be taken for a target host
handler: task that is only invoked conditionally from notifying task
returning a changed status

task list : file containing just tasks
vars file: file containing yaml variable declarations (mapping/dictionary)