cans.package-install

Simple Ansible Role that installs a given list of Debian packages (.deb).

The intent of this role is not to come with all the bells and whistles. It is more a minimalistic, but efficient and reusable, package installation method. It is basically a procedure that, when given a list of packages, installs them.

Requirements

This role has no particular pre-requisite. But is assumes the target server(s) use the Debian distribution or a derivative.

Role Variables

All variables in this role are namespaced using the pkginstall_ prefix.

This role also defines variables for its internal use. Those are prefixed with _pkginstall_. You should not use those variables.

Input variables

For this roles to perform any task, you must define either or both of the pkginstall_packages_absent and `pkginstall_packages_present variables.

• pkginstall_packages: DEPRECATED Use pkginstall_package_present instead (default: []);
• pkginstall_packages_present: a list of package names to ensure are installed on the target host(s) (default: []);
• pkginstall_packages_absent: a list of package names to ensure are not installed on the target host(s) (default: []);

Defaults

• pkginstall_apt_package_list_cache_directory: path to the directory that stores available package lists and packages content lists. This variable is only required if you set pkginstall_cache_purge to true (see below). It is very unlikely you would ever need to change this. (default: "/var/lib/apt/lists")
• pkginstall_cache_ttl: package cache validity duration, in seconds (default: 3600)
• pkginstall_cache_update: whether to update the package cache or not before installing packages (default: true)
• pkginstall_purge: when removing packages, also remove their configuration files (default: true);
• pkginstall_recommended: whether to install recommended packages alongside the packages explicitly listed for installation (default: false).
• pkginstall_update_cache: DEPRECATED use pkginstall_cache_update instead (default: true)

Dependencies

This role has no formal dependencies. But it requires from you to override the pkginstall_packages variable to actually perform anything (cf. example playbook below).

You may also be interested in using the cans.package-source role in conjunction with this one, to add extra package repositories to those already known by APT.

Example Playbooks

Assume you have two roles, first_role and second_roles, each of which defines a variable that contains a list of packages to install, let say first_role_packages and second_role_packages, respectively. You can then, to use this role, start by assigning the pkg_install_packages variable with the concatenation of both list. Then just call the role.

- hosts: servers
  vars:
    pkginstall_packages: "{{ first_role_packages + second_role_packages }}"
  roles:
    - role: cans.package-install
    - role: first_role
    - role: second_role

If for some reason you cannot install all the packages at once (e.g. because first_role installs or configures somethings required before being able to install the packages required by second_role:

- hosts: servers
  roles:
    - role: cans.package-install
      pkginstall_packages: "{{ first_role_packages }}"
    - role: first_role
    - role: cans.package-install
      pkginstall_packages: "{{ second_role_packages }}"
    - role: second_role

The above examples assume Ansible connects to the target servers with an identity that has sufficient privileges to install packages. If not you may need to use either or both of the remote_user and become keywords:

- hosts: servers
  remote_user: "privileged-user"
  vars:
    pkginstall_packages: "{{ first_role_packages + second_role_packages }}"
  roles:
    - role: cans.package-install
      become: yes
    - role: first_role
    - role: second_role

License

GPLv2

Author Information

Copyright © 2017-2018, Nicolas CANIART.