proflow

TL;DR

A role and playbook state enforcer lives as a templated main.yml

Currently Ansible does not contain any kind of conventions for role provisioning / deprovisioning, which leads to either fragmented adoption, or simply no support, on the mentioned flow control.

This collection aims to regulate ansible role on provisioning flow for different states (i.e. provision as present and deprovision as absent).

Philosophy

An EXTRA_VARS naming state will be used in any custom playbook for signposting the provisioning flow among roles

state=present

This will serve as positive flow for role provisioning. It is also a default state for the role which applied proflow.

state=absent

This will serve as negative flow for role de-provisioning. Optional.

Usage

Installation

ansible-galaxy collection install cedricpoon.proflow

Applying via apply.yml

# Run the following command in your ansible project directory
ansible-playbook ~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/cedricpoon/proflow/apply.yml

EXTRA_VARS in apply.yml

Variable	Description	Default	Remarks
current	Indicates whenever main.yml applies to current working directory or roles underneath	yes	-
targets	A list for remote role folders for applying main.yml	[]	Empty list for applying to all role folders. Only used when current == 'no'

Example

Folder structure

roles/
    common/               # this hierarchy represents a "role"
        tasks/            #
            main.yml      #  <-- tasks file can include smaller files if warranted
...

Using current

cd ./roles/common

# current default to be `yes`
ansible-playbook ~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/cedricpoon/proflow/apply.yml

Using targets

ansible-playbook ~/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/cedricpoon/proflow/apply.yml -e '{"targets": ["common"], "current": "no"}'

EXTRA_VARS in main.yml

Variable	Description	Default	Remarks	Values
state	Signposting the provisioning flow	present	-	[present, absent]
rollback	Task YAML for rollback iff task(s) in main.present.yml failed	undefined	state=absent will be passed to included rollback YAML	String path to task yaml
confirm	Should skip prompt when state=absent	undefined	-	Any

API

Proflow will provide and maintain a standardized main.yml through playbook apply.yml. You need to maintain main.xxx.yml for subscription to different provision approaches (e.g. present). All main.xxx.yml should be lazily loaded by proflow's main.yml (i.e. Not loaded not running without exceptions, if file not exists).

File	Description
main.present.yml	Positively provisioning the role
main.absent.yml	Negatively de-provisioning the role

Magic Variables

Proflow also provides a list of magic variables for reflecting internal changes among current execution.

Variable	Description
__state__	Current inflow state
__failed__	ansible_failed_task inside proflow