Ansible-lint

ansible-lint checks playbooks for practices and behaviour that could potentially be improved

Setup

Using pip:

pip install ansible-lint

From source:

git clone https://github.com/willthames/ansible-lint
export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:`pwd`/ansible-lint/lib

Usage

Usage: ansible-lint playbook.yml

Options:
  --version     show program's version number and exit
  -h, --help    show this help message and exit
  -L            list all the rules
  -q            quieter, although not silent output
  -r RULESDIR   location of rules directory
  -t TAGS       only check rules tagged with these values
  -T            list all the tags
  -x SKIP_TAGS  only check rules whose tags do not match these values

Rules

Rules are described using a class file per rule. Default rules are named DeprecatedVariableRule.py, etc.

Each rule definition should have the following:

• ID: A unique identifier
• Short description: Brief description of the rule
• Description: Behaviour the rule is looking for
• Tags: one or more tags that may be used to include or exclude the rule
• At least one of the following methods:
  • match that takes a line and returns None or False if the line doesn't match the test and True or a custom message (this allows one rule to test multiple behaviours - see e.g. the CommandsInsteadOfModulesRule
  • matchblock that takes the details about the file and a block. It returns None or False if the line doesn't match the test and True or a custom message.

An example rule using match is:

from ansiblelint import AnsibleLintRule

class DeprecatedVariableRule(AnsibleLintRule):

    id = 'ANSIBLE0001'
    shortdesc = 'Deprecated variable declarations'
    description = 'Check for lines that have old style ${var} ' + \
                  'declarations'
    tags = { 'deprecated' }


    def match(self, line):
        return '${' in line

An example rule using matchtask is:

import ansiblelint.utils
from ansiblelint import AnsibleLintRule

class TaskHasTag(AnsibleLintRule):
    id = 'ANSIBLE0008'
    shortdesc = 'Tasks must have tag'
    description = 'Tasks must have tag'
    tags = ['productivity']


    def matchtask(self, file, task):
        # If the task include another task or make the playbook fail
        # Don't force to have a tag
        if not set(task.keys()).isdisjoint(['include','fail']):
            return False

        # Task should have tags
        if not task.has_key('tags'):
              return True

        return False

The task argument to matchtask contains a number of keys - the critical one is action. The value of task['action'] contains the module being used, and the arguments passed, both as key-value pairs and a list of other arguments (e.g. the command used with shell)

In ansible-lint 2.0.0, task['action']['args'] was renamed task['action']['module_arguments'] to avoid a clash when a module actually takes args as a parameter key (e.g. ec2_tag) Examples

There are some example playbooks with undesirable features. Running ansible-lint on them works:

ansible-lint examples/example.yml
[ANSIBLE0006] git used in place of git module
examples/example.yml:31
    action: command git clone blah

[ANSIBLE0002] Trailing whitespace
examples/example.yml:19
    action: do nothing

[ANSIBLE0001] Old style (${var}) brackets
examples/example.yml:10
    action: command echo ${oldskool}

[ANSIBLE0003] Mismatched { and }
examples/example.yml:13
    action: debug oops a missing {{bracket}

[ANSIBLE0004] Checkouts must contain explicit version
examples/example.yml:22
    action: git a=b c=d

[ANSIBLE0004] Checkouts must contain explicit version
examples/example.yml:25
    action: git version=HEAD c=d

[ANSIBLE0004] Checkouts must contain explicit version
examples/example.yml:34
    action: git command

If playbooks include other playbooks, or tasks, or handlers or roles, these are also handled:

$ bin/ansible-lint examples/include.yml
[ANSIBLE0003] Mismatched { and }
/Users/will/src/ansible-lint/examples/play.yml:6
    action: oops {{the} bracketing is {{wrong}}

[ANSIBLE0004] Checkouts must contain explicit version
/Users/will/src/ansible-lint/examples/roles/bobbins/tasks/main.yml:3
action: git a=b c=d

Contributing

Please read CONTRIBUTING.md if you wish to contribute.