Variable that has the path to the current ansible-playbook that is executing

Question

Is there an ansible variable that has the absolute path to the current ansible-playbook that is executing   some context  I m running creating an ansible script against localhost to configure a mysql docker and wanting to mount the data volume relative to the ansible script    For example  let s say I ve checkout a repository to   branch1  and then I run ansible-playbook dev yml I was thinking it should save the volume to   branch1  docker volume   If I ran it from   branch2 then it should configure the volume to   branch2  docker volume

User · Answer

There is no build-in variable for this purpose, but you can always find out the playbook's absolute path with "pwd" command, and register its output to a variable.

- name: Find out playbook's path
  shell: pwd
  register: playbook_path_output
- debug: var=playbook_path_output.stdout

Now the path is available in variable playbook_path_output.stdout

User · Answer

You can use playbook dir variable

User · Answer

Unfortunately there isn t   In fact the absolute path is a bit meaningless  and potentially confusing  in the context of how Ansible runs  In a nutshell  when you invoke a playbook then for each task Ansible physically copies the module associated with the task to a temporary directory on the target machine and then invokes the module with the necessary parameters   So the absolute path on the target machine is just a temporary directory that only contains a few temporary files within it  and it doesn t even include the full playbook  Also  knowing a full path of a file on the Ansible server is pretty much useless on a target machine unless you re replicating your entire Ansible directory tree on the targets   To see all the variables that are defined by Ansible you can simply run the following command     ansible -m setup hostname   What is the reason you think you need to know the absolute path to the playbook

User · Answer

There don t seem to be a variable which holds exactly what you want   However  quoting the docs      Also available  inventory dir is the pathname of the directory holding   Ansible   s inventory host file  inventory file is the pathname and the   filename pointing to the Ansible   s inventory host file       playbook dir contains the playbook base directory       And finally  role path will return the current role   s pathname  since   1 8   This will only work inside a role    Dependent on your setup  those or the   pwd -based solution might be enough

User · Answer

I was using a playbook like this to test my roles locally   --- - hosts  localhost   roles       - role      but this stopped working with Ansible v2 2   I debugged the aforementioned solution of  --- - hosts  all   tasks      - name  Find out playbooks path       shell  pwd       register  playbook path output     - debug  var playbook path output stdout   and it produced my home directory and not the  current working directory   I settled with  --- - hosts  all   roles      - role     playbook dir      per the solution above

[ansible] Variable that has the path to the current ansible-playbook that is executing?

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