We just accidentally re-implemented the task timeout keyword with a combination of async and poll, mostly because there is discussion of the latter two on the Asynchronous actions and polling page, but no discussion of the task timeout keyword anywhere. It is mentioned in the Playbook Keywords page, but that’s it as far as I’ve found.
The obvious fix is to add some discussion about timeout to the docs. Much less obvious is where that discussion should land. My lean is that it should be part of the “Asynchronous actions and polling” page, since it is sort of the “null case” of async. At least it should get a mention in the discussion of async, particularly since for some cases timeout may be a better fit anyway.
Looking through the index for candidate homes for a task timeout discussion turns up:
- Using Ansible playbooks / Ansible playbooks / Task execution
- Using Ansible playbooks / Ansible playbooks / Playbook execution / Task execution
- Using Ansible playbooks / Executing playbooks / Asynchronous actions and polling
- Using Ansible playbooks / Working with playbooks / Error handling in playbooks
In other words, the current structure on the left doesn’t make it obvious to me where such a discussion should land. If not in the Asynchronous actions page, then do we have a much bigger problem?