Introduction
In the world of automation and infrastructure management, Ansible has emerged as a powerful tool for simplifying complex tasks. It provides an efficient way to manage and configure systems. When working with Ansible, organization and documentation are key, and that's where metadata plays a vital role. Ansible Rule 703, "meta-incorrect," ensures that your role metadata adheres to certain standards.
Understanding Role Metadata
Roles are a fundamental concept in Ansible. They encapsulate a set of tasks, variables, and templates, making it easier to organize and reuse automation logic. Each role can have associated metadata, defined in the meta/main.yml file. Metadata helps describe the role and provides important information about it.
The Significance of Rule 703
Rule 703, "meta-incorrect," checks role metadata for fields with undefined or default values. It enforces the convention of setting appropriate values for specific metadata fields in the meta/main.yml file.
The metadata fields that should have defined values are:
1. author
2. description
3. company
4. license
Rule 703 ensures that these fields are not left with placeholder or default values. Let's explore why adhering to this rule is essential.
Problematic Code vs. Correct Code
Let's compare problematic code that violates Rule 703 with the correct code that aligns with the rule's recommendations.
Problematic Code
Metadata fields for the role contain default values.
meta/main.yml
``yaml
---
galaxy_info:
author: your name
description: your role description
company: your company (optional)
license: license (GPL-2.0-or-later, MIT, etc)
`
Output
`bash
WARNING Listing 4 violation(s) that are fatal
meta-incorrect: Should change default metadata: author
role703/meta/main.yml:1
meta-incorrect: Should change default metadata: company
role703/meta/main.yml:1
meta-incorrect: Should change default metadata: license
role703/meta/main.yml:1
schema[meta]: $.galaxy_info.min_ansible_version 2.1 is not of type 'string'. See https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/playbook_guide/playbooks_reuse_roles.html#using-role-dependencies
role703/meta/main.yml:1 Returned errors will not include exact line numbers, but they will mention
the schema name being used as a tag, like schema[playbook],
schema[tasks].
This rule is not skippable and stops further processing of the file.
If incorrect schema was picked, you might want to either:
* move the file to standard location, so its file is detected correctly.
* use kinds:` option in linter config to help it pick correct file type.
Read documentation for instructions on how to ignore specific rule violations.
Rule Violation Summary
count tag profile rule associated tags
1 schema[meta] basic core
3 meta-incorrect shared metadata
Failed: 4 failure(s), 0 warning(s) on 1 files. Last profil