Enhancing Ansible Role Development with Best Practices with ansible-later

Discover ansible-later, a fast and user-friendly linting tool for Ansible roles. Learn about its installation, configuration, and default settings to enforce best practices in your Ansible codebase.

Introduction

When it comes to developing Ansible roles in a collaborative environment, adhering to coding and best practices is essential. It ensures that roles are readable, maintainable, and minimizes troubleshooting time. ansible-later is a valuable tool designed to serve as a best practice scanner and linting tool for Ansible resources.

What is ansible-later?

ansible-later focuses on providing a fast and user-friendly linting experience for Ansible roles. While it may not offer the depth of analysis provided by some other tools like ansible-lint, it serves as an excellent choice for quickly identifying and enforcing best practices within your Ansible codebase.

Installation

To get started with ansible-later, ensure that Ansible is installed on your system. You can install ansible-later using pip with one of the optional dependency groups – either ansible or ansible-core:

install for the current user

``bash


pip install ansible-later[ansible] --user  # or ansible-later[ansible-core]



install system-wide

`bash


sudo pip install ansible-later[ansible]  # or ansible-later[ansible-core]



Configuration

By default, ansible-later ships with configurations that are suitable for most users. However, customization is possible through YAML configuration files or CLI options. The configuration options include settings for custom Ansible modules, variable formatting rules, allowed literal bools, and more.



It follows a hierarchy for configuration, with CLI options having the highest priority, allowing users flexibility in setting their preferences.

Default Settings

The default configuration includes settings for custom Ansible modules, variable formatting rules, literal bools, and more. Users can override these defaults based on their specific needs.

`yaml


Sample Default Configuration
ansible:
  custom_modules: []
  double-braces:
    max-spaces-inside: 1
    min-spaces-inside: 1
  literal-bools: ["True", "False", "yes", "no"]
  named-task:
    exclude: ["meta", "debug", "block", "include_role", ...]
  native-yaml:
    exclude: []
  ...
logging:
  json: False
  level: "warning"
rules:
  buildin: True
  exclude_files: []
  filter: []
  ...
yamllint:
  colons: {max-spaces-after: 1, max-spaces-before: 0}
  document-start: {present: True}
  empty-lines: {max: 1, max-end: 1, max-start: 0}
  ...



Usage

To lint your Ansible files, use the following command:

`bash


ansible-later FILES

If no files are provided, ansible-later reviews all files in the current working directory (excluding hidden files and folders). You can also specify files, directories, or use glob patterns to target specific files for linting.



Included Rules

ansible-later` comes with a set of built-in rules that cover various aspects of Ansible role development. Here are some of the rules:

LINT0001: YAML should not contain unnecessarily empty lines.

LINT0002: YAML should be correctly indented.

**ANS