I’ve been using Ansible for the last several years, and I’ve used YAML just as long. Yet a lot of playbooks and tasks for Ansible are often horribly formatted. This causes anger within me, so I want to let others know, that there is a better way.
“Use the YAML, Ansible Writers”
YAML may not be as expressive as other formats, however, as authors of roles and tasks for Ansible we can do better at formatting so that they are readable.
Example of hard to read
--- - name: download file get_url: url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/some/path/some.file dest=/usr/local/share/some.file - name: update permissions file: path=/usr/local/share/some.file mode="0644"
Example of a more readable version of the above.
---
- name: download file
get_url:
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/some/path/some.file
dest: /usr/local/share/some.file
- name: update permissions
file:
path: /usr/local/share/some.file
mode: "0644"
It’s easier to change change /usr/local/share/some.file into "{{ download_file_dest }}" because you don’t have parse the entire line and scroll over in your HEAD!