Ansible roles requiring other ansible roles

Question

I have the following directory structure in my playbook:

deploy-thing
├── README.md
├── files
│   ├── thing.service
│   └── ld.local.conf
├── main.yml
├── roles
│   ├── ansible-role-add-swap
│   │   ├── README.md
│   │   ├── defaults
│   │   │   └── main.yml
│   │   └── tasks
│   │       └── main.yml
│   ├── ansible-role-build-pkgs
│   │   └── tasks
│   │       └── main.yml
│   ├── ansible-role-deploy-other-thing
│   │   ├── README.md
│   │   ├── main.yml
│   │   ├── roles
│   │   │   ├── ansible-role-build-pkgs
│   │   │   │   └── tasks
│   │   │   │       └── main.yml
│   │   │   └── ansible-role-build-redis
│   │   │       ├── README.md
│   │   │       └── tasks
│   │   │           └── main.yml
│   │   ├── tasks
│   │   │   └── main.yml
└── vars.yml

Within main.yml, the following is called:

  roles:
    - {role: ./roles/ansible-role-deploy-other-thing}

Within roles/ansible-role-deploy-other-thing/tasks/main.yml, the following is called:

  - include_role:
      name: ansible-role-build-redis

When run, this include_role causes the following error:

ERROR! the role 'ansible-role-build-redis' was not found in /Users/myuser/playbooks/deploy-thing/roles:/Users/myuser/.ansible/roles:/usr/share/ansible/roles:/etc/ansible/roles:/Users/myuser/playbooks/deploy-thing

It appears that the parent is only searching its own roles path when running, not the role path of the role we're using (ansible-role-deploy-other-thing). How can I cause it to search its own roles path, allowing me to deploy roles within roles?

idriss Eliguene idriss Eliguene · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-04T09:12:55

i don't think it's a good practice to include Ansible roles on another roles. if you want any role depends on other, use the meta/main.yml file under your role to create dependency between two or more roles.

So you puts all the roles at the same level (deploy-thing/roles)

and you add meta like this on the ansible-role-deploy-other-thing/meta/main.yml file. (it's a best practice to create a role using ansible-galaxy ansible-galaxy init ansible-role-deploy-other-thing)

  dependencies:
    - role: ansible-role-build-pkgs
    - role: ansible-role-build-redis

Read the Meta Ansible Documentation for roles dependency: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks_reuse_roles.html#role-dependencies

Ansible roles requiring other ansible roles

2 Answers