4.0 - Roles¶

4.1 - Roles Introduction¶

Recommended way of developing playbooks
Allows for organization of project in a standard structure and for reusable tasks
Role creation automatically creates a folder structure for it, containing:
README
tests folder
tasks folder
handlers folder
vars folder
defaults folder
To use a role, implement it at the top level of the playbook in a similar manner to:

- name: <Playbook>
  hosts: web
  roles:
  - rolename 1
  - rolename 2

Doing so will include everything defined under the role folder, removing the need for "includes" statements.
This keeps the playbook simple, and allows the role to be reused elsewhere.
Roles can then be shared to ansible-galaxy for use.
Create a role with ansible-galaxy init <rolename> or create the folder structure manually
With roles, the originally monolithic application can be distributed, having the application running on 1, and the database on another.

Login to https://galaxy.ansible.com
Navigate to the roles directory
For each role:
cd into the role
Ensure the README and metadata/main.yaml files are updated as required. For the latter:
- Uncomment platforms section
- Add any galaxy_tags desired
Add the role to a designated Github repository
Via ansible galaxy, import the role from github.