Ansible: when conditional is ignored if with_items contains undefined value

[jimmymccrory]

Issue Type:

Bug Report

Ansible Version:

ansible 2.1.0
  config file =
  configured module search path = Default w/o overrides

Environment:

Ubuntu 14.04

Summary:

A task's with_items seem to be evaluated before its when clause.
If a variable used within an item is undefined, the task will fail even if the when clause says it should only run when that same variable is defined.

Steps To Reproduce:

- hosts: localhost
  tasks:
  - name: Copy test file
    copy:
      src: "{{ item.src }}"
      dest: "{{ item.dest }}"
      owner: "root"
      group: "root"
      mode: "{{ item.mode }}"
    with_items:
      - { src: "{{ test_src }}", dest: "/tmp/test", mode: "0644" }
    when: test_src is defined

Expected Results:

Task is skipped since test_src is undefined

Worked as expected in Ansible 1.9.4

ansible 1.9.4
  configured module search path = None

TASK: [Copy test file] ********************************************************
skipping: [localhost] => (item={'dest': '/tmp/test', 'src': u'{# test_src #}', 'mode': '0644'})

Actual Results:

TASK [Copy test file] **********************************************************
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"failed": true, "msg": "ERROR! 'test_src' is undefined"}

[bcoca]

Possible Misunderstanding

Hi!

Thanks very much for your submission to Ansible. It sincerely means a lot to us.

We believe the ticket you have filed is being somewhat misunderstood, as one thing works a little differently than stated.

with_ clauses ALWAYS evaluate before the when clause, otherwise we cannot use item and condition loop iterations. So this is not a bug, just how ansible works. The default and ternary filters can be used to avoid the undefined error.

In the future, this might be a topic more well suited for the user list, which you can also post here if you'd like some more help with the above.

• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ansible-project

Thank you once again for this and your interest in Ansible!