120 lines
5 KiB
ReStructuredText
120 lines
5 KiB
ReStructuredText
Developing Plugins
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==================
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Ansible is pluggable in a lot of other ways seperate from inventory scripts and callbacks. Many of these features are there to cover
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fringe use cases and are infrequently needed, and others are pluggable simply because they are there to implement core features
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in ansible and were most convient to be made pluggable.
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This section will explore these features, though they are generally not common in terms of things people would look to extend.
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.. _developing_connection_type_plugins:
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Connection Type Plugins
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-----------------------
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By default, ansible ships with a 'paramiko' SSH, native ssh (just called 'ssh'), and 'local' connection type, and an accelerated connection type named 'fireball' -- there are also some minor players like 'chroot' and 'jail'. All of these can be used
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in playbooks and with /usr/bin/ansible to decide how you want to talk to remote machines. The basics of these connection types
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are covered in the 'getting started' section. Should you want to extend Ansible to support other transports (SNMP? Message bus?
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Carrier Pigeon?) it's as simple as copying the format of one of the existing modules and dropping it into the connection plugins
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directory. The value of 'smart' for a connection allows selection of paramiko or openssh based on system capabilities, and chooses
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'ssh' if OpenSSH supports ControlPersist, in Ansible 1.2.1 an later. Previous versions did not support 'smart'.
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More documentation on writing connection plugins is pending, though you can jump into lib/ansible/runner/connection_plugins and figure
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things out pretty easily.
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.. _developing_lookup_plugins:
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Lookup Plugins
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--------------
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Language constructs like "with_fileglob" and "with_items" are implemented via lookup plugins. Just like other plugin types, you can write your own.
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More documentation on writing connection plugins is pending, though you can jump into lib/ansible/runner/lookup_plugins and figure
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things out pretty easily.
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.. _developing_vars_plugins:
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Vars Plugins
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------------
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Playbook constructs like 'host_vars' and 'group_vars' work via 'vars' plugins. They inject additional variable
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data into ansible runs that did not come from an inventory, playbook, or command line. Note that variables
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can also be returned from inventory, so in most cases, you won't need to write or understand vars_plugins.
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More documentation on writing connection plugins is pending, though you can jump into lib/ansible/inventory/vars_plugins and figure
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things out pretty easily.
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If you find yourself wanting to write a vars_plugin, it's more likely you should write an inventory script instead.
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.. _developing_filter_plugins:
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Filter Plugins
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--------------
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If you want more Jinja2 filters available in a Jinja2 template (filters like to_yaml and to_json are provided by default), they can be extended by writing a filter plugin. Most of the time, when someone comes up with an idea for a new filter they would like to make available in a playbook, we'll just include them in 'core.py' instead.
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Jump into lib/ansible/runner/filter_plugins/ for details.
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.. _developing_callbacks:
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Callbacks
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---------
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Callbacks are one of the more interesting plugin types. Adding additional callback plugins to Ansible allows for adding new behaviors when responding to events.
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.. _callback_examples:
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Examples
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++++++++
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Example callbacks are shown `in github in the callbacks directory <https://github.com/ansible/ansible/tree/devel/plugins/callbacks>_`.
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The 'log_plays' callback is an example of how to intercept playbook events to a log file, and the 'mail' callback sends email
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when playbooks complete.
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The 'osx_say' callback provided is particularly entertaining -- it will respond with computer synthesized speech on OS X in relation
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to playbook events, and is guaranteed to entertain and/or annoy coworkers.
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.. _configuring_callbacks:
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Configuring
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+++++++++++
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To active a callback drop it in a callback directory as configured in ansible.cfg.
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.. _callback_development:
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Development
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+++++++++++
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More information will come later, though see the source of any of the existing callbacks and you should be able to get started quickly.
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They should be reasonably self explanatory.
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.. _distributing_plugins:
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Distributing Plugins
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--------------------
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Plugins are loaded from both Python's site_packages (those that ship with ansible) and a configured plugins directory, which defaults
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to /usr/share/ansible/plugins, in a subfolder for each plugin type::
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* action_plugins
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* lookup_plugins
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* callback_plugins
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* connection_plugins
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* filter_plugins
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* vars_plugins
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To change this path, edit the ansible configuration file.
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In addition, plugins can be shipped in a subdirectory relative to a top-level playbook, in folders named the same as indicated above.
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.. seealso::
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:doc:`modules`
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List of built-in modules
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`Mailing List <http://groups.google.com/group/ansible-project>`_
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Questions? Help? Ideas? Stop by the list on Google Groups
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`irc.freenode.net <http://irc.freenode.net>`_
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#ansible IRC chat channel
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