Ansible shared files between roles

Question

Ansible Best Practices described that every role contains file directory that have all files needed by this rule.

In my case I have different roles that share the same files. But I cannot make a copy of these files in each role as there will be no one source of these files and if edit happens to one of them it will become tedious to make this change for every role.

A solution I made is to create another folder and reference it using absolute or relative path. Is this the best way of doing it?

My ansible directory look like this

play.yml
roles/
  web/
    tasks/
    files/
      common-1
      common-2
      other-multiple-files
  role-2/
    tasks/
    files/
      common-1
      common-2
      other-multiple-files
  role-3/
    tasks/
      files/
        common-2
  role-4/
    tasks/
      files/
        common-1

Answer 1

You've got two reasonably decent approaches you can try here to reduce repetition.

You could have a separate shared-files directory that sits as a sibling to your role folders like this:

play.yml
roles/
  web/
    tasks/
    files/
      other-multiple-files
  role-2/
    tasks/
    files/
      other-multiple-files
  role-3/
    tasks/
  role-4/
    tasks/
  shared-files/
    common-1
    common-2

You would then reference this in the tasks with a relative file location from where the role/files folder would be:

- name: copy common-1
  copy:
    src: ../../common-1
    dest: /path/to/dest/common-1

- name: copy role specific file
    src: other-multiple-files
    dest: /path/to/dest/other-multiple-files

Or alternatively to use a relative path to the folder, you could symlink things across like this:

play.yml
roles/
  web/
    tasks/
    files/
      common-1 -> ../../common-1
      common-2 -> ../../common-2
      other-multiple-files
  role-2/
    tasks/
    files/
      common-1 -> ../../common-1
      common-2 -> ../../common-2
      other-multiple-files
  role-3/
    tasks/
    files/
      common-2 -> ../../common-2
  role-4/
    tasks/
    files/
      common-1 -> ../../common-1
  shared-files/
    common-1
    common-2

And you can then reference the file as if it was in the role/files directory directly:

- name: copy common-1
  copy:
    src: common-1
    dest: /path/to/dest/common-1

- name: copy role specific file
    src: other-multiple-files
    dest: /path/to/dest/other-multiple-files

Answer 2

My solution was to create roles for the common stuff and add them as dependencies.

For example, your playbook would look like this

play.yml
roles/
  common-1/
    files/
      common-1
  common-2/
    files/
      common-2
  web/
    meta/
      common-1
      common-2
    tasks/
    files/
      other-multiple-files
  role-2/
    meta/
      common-1
      common-2
    tasks/
    files/
      other-multiple-files
  role-3/
    meta/
      common-2
    tasks/
  role-4/
    meta/
      common-1
    tasks/

so, roles/common-1 and roles/common-2 are roles that just deploy the files, and all the roles that need those, they have it as a dependency in the meta/ folder.

Answer 3

Ansible actually supports project-wide common folders. There is no need to create custom-named folders. See the answer by and in this other question Ansible: Global template folder?

A tasks/ folder at the ansible/ root level is also accepted.

On a side note, I wasn't able to find any official documentation on this sort of directory structure https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks_best_practices.html#directory-layout

Answer 4

I use some given ansible variables like inventory_dir and place the files in relation to this path. So then I define a variable

common_files_path: "{{ inventory_dir }}/resources/shared_files"

... and then use it in the ansible task

- name: get local files
  command: cat {{ item }}
  register: some_files
  with_fileglob: "{{ common_files_path }}/*"
  delegate_to: localhost

Answer 5

There's one other way that hasn't been discussed here, yet. You can create a "files" and other directories in the same folder where the the main playbooks are located, and use the playbook_dir special variable to access them.

For example:

play.yml
files/
  common-1.py
roles/
  role-1/
    tasks/
      main.yml

Then, in roles/role-1/tasks/main.yml run the common scripts from the play-level "files" directory like this:

- name: Run common-1.py
  command: "{{ playbook_dir }}/files/common-1.py"
  changed_when: false

Answer 6

The "src" path is relative to the "files" directory in your role. This is why file roles/bar/files/foo.txt is picked up by simply specifying foo.txt as your src. By extension, relative paths are relative to the files folder. Sot the location of src: ../../../../foo/bar.txt is crystal clear. If all your roles need bar.txt they can all provide that same relative path since all your roles are siblings.