Open Stack

Hi Chandan,

You could load the config_template action plugin by cloning the role,
as you are already doing, and then including the role in a playbook
using the "roles:" tag, the import_role/include_role modules, or
another role's meta dependency[0]. As long as you do one of these
things prior to executing a task using the config_template module, it
should be loaded into the plugins path for use.

[0] https://github.com/logan2211/ansible-ramdisk-builder/blob/94940fea700d2f8f560d64bf8ca0c88ec0e600e3/roles/image_sysprep/meta/main.yml#L29-L30

On Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 6:53 AM Chandan kumar <chkumar246 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> From last few months, we have started using
> openstack-ansible-os_tempest role developed
> under openstack-ansible project in TripleO for running tempest
>
> os_tempest[1] role depends on ansible-role-python_venv_build[2] role
> and ansible-config_template[3]
> action plugin.
>
> In order to install these dependencies with os_tempest,
> we have changed the setup.cfg [data_files] section based on
> tripleo-quickstart setup.py file
> https://github.com/openstack/tripleo-quickstart/blob/master/setup.cfg#L27
>
> [files]
> data_files =
> usr/local/share/tripleo-quickstart/roles = roles/*
>
> for python_venv_build and ansible-config_template, we tweaked
> role_path and action_plugin
> in ansible.cfg https://github.com/openstack/tripleo-quickstart/blob/master/ansible.cfg#L16
>
> It is working fine. Later on, we started checking other roles and
> action plugins available
> on openstack ecosystem in order to make user experience easier, we found that
> ansible-role-tripleo-modify-image dumps it's files in
> share/ansible/roles/tripleo-modify-image/
> directory [ https://github.com/openstack/ansible-role-tripleo-modify-image/blob/master/setup.cfg#L23]
> and  kolla-ansible is dumping all stuff at share/kolla-ansible/ansible
> [https://github.com/openstack/kolla-ansible/blob/master/setup.cfg#L27]
>
> and ceph-ansible can copied the config_template action_plugin to their own repo
> https://github.com/ceph/ceph-ansible/blob/master/plugins/actions/config_template.py
> so that end-user can just clone the role & action_plugin and just do
> python setup.py install
>
> In all above case, these are using python packaging format.
>
> Currently ansible looks for roles and plugins by default at following
> different places from
> https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/config/base.yml
>
> action_plugins:  ~/.ansible/plugins/action:/usr/share/ansible/plugins/action
> roles_path: default:
> ~/.ansible/roles:/usr/share/ansible/roles:/etc/ansible/roles
>
> By seeing that, we thought use to introduce requirements.yaml file to keep the
> ansible role requirements and then use ansible-galaxy install -r
> requirments.yaml
> it will install both the dependencies to ~/.ansible/roles directory but
> it will not load config_template action plugins and for enduser, we explicitly
> export the ANSIBLE_ACTION_PLUGINS to ~/.ansible/roles/config_template
> which is too much for an end user.
>
> Patch example: https://review.openstack.org/#/q/topic:ostempest_packaging+(status:open+OR+status:merged)
>
> For end user, we are looking for solution something like that or may
> be something better:
> git clone <os_tempest> then
> ansible-galaxy install or python setup.py install and we are done
> to run the playbook.
>
> But as you see above, different projects uses different ways of packaging
> the role and action plugins.
>
> Do we have defined standard around packaging ansible roles and ansible modules
> in OpenStack so that it will be easily consumable so that ansible can easily
> find the role and action_plugins?
> Like in terms of where to keep ansible role & action plugin  while using
> setup.cfg or any other format.
>
> Thanks for reading,
>
> Links:
> [1.] https://github.com/openstack/openstack-ansible-os_tempest/
> [2.] https://github.com/openstack/ansible-role-python_venv_build
> [3.] https://github.com/openstack/ansible-config_template
>
> Thanks,
>
> Chandan Kumar
>