Creating Galaxy Roles in Ansible

Introduction

Ansible Galaxy is a hub for finding, reusing, and sharing Ansible roles. Roles are a way of bundling automation content and can be reused across different projects. In this tutorial, we will walk through the process of creating and using roles in Ansible Galaxy.

Prerequisites

Before we start, make sure you have the following installed on your system:

• Ansible (version 2.9 or later)
• Python (version 2.7 or later)

Step 1: Install Ansible

If you haven't installed Ansible yet, you can do so using pip. Open your terminal and run the following command:

To verify the installation, run:

Step 2: Create a New Role

Use the ansible-galaxy command to create a new role. Navigate to your project directory and run:

This command will create a new role directory structure:

Step 3: Define Tasks

Edit the tasks/main.yml file to define the tasks for your role. Here is an example of a simple task that installs a package:

---
- name: Install nginx
  apt:
    name: nginx
    state: present
                

Step 4: Define Default Variables

Edit the defaults/main.yml file to define default variables for your role. Here is an example:

---
package_name: nginx
                

Step 5: Use the Role in a Playbook

Create a playbook to use your new role. Here is an example site.yml playbook:

---
- hosts: webservers
  roles:
    - my_role
                

Run the playbook using the ansible-playbook command:

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we walked through the process of creating a new role in Ansible Galaxy, defining tasks and variables, and using the role in a playbook. By following these steps, you can create reusable and shareable automation content for your projects.