Create config variables for file modes, user, group

[jamesmontalvo3]

At present many Ansible tasks look like:

- name: Copy something
  copy:
    src: /path/to/src/XYZ
    dest: /path/to/dest/XYZ
    mode: 0755
    owner: someowner
    group: somegroup

Where the mode, owner, and group are hard-coded. These could easily conflict with other tasks/playbooks that interact with this file or directory. It would be good to have config variables like xyz_mode = 0755 and xyz_owner = someowner such that the above task could be rewritten:

- name: Copy something
  copy:
    src: /path/to/src/XYZ
    dest: /path/to/dest/XYZ
    mode: "{{ xyz_mode }}"
    owner: "{{ xyz_owner }}"
    group: "{{ xyz_group }}"

Perhaps this could be taken a step further, such that the configuration variable could be written as an object that looks like:

file_xyz:
  src: /path/to/src/xyz
  dest: /path/to/dest/xyz
  mode: 0755
  owner: someowner
  group: somegroup

And the task could be rewritten:

- name: Copy something
  copy:
    src: "{{ file_xyz.src }}"
    dest: "{{ file_xyz.dest }}"
    mode: "{{ file_xyz.mode }}"
    owner: "{{ file_xyz.owner }}"
    group: "{{ file_xyz.group }}"

That may be taking it too far, though.

[jamesmontalvo3]

Add recursive: yes|no to config?

[jamesmontalvo3]

Also go through roles and ensure all file mode changing tasks have a user/group/mode specified.

[jamesmontalvo3]

Even better would be:

m_paths:
  data:
    path: "/opt/data-meza"
    owner: meza-ansible
    group: wheel
    mode: "0775"
    servers: all
  uploads:
    path: "/opt/data-meza/uploads"
    better_path: "{{ m_paths.data.path }}/uploads" # if possible to do something like this (prob not)
    owner: apache
    group: apache
    mode: "0775"
    servers: app-servers

Then could setup paths like:

- name: Setup paths
  file:
    path: "{{ item.path }}"
    state: directory
    mode: "{{ item.mode }}"
    owner: "{{ item.owner }}"
    group: "{{ item.group }}"
  with_items: "{{ m_paths }}"
  when: item.servers == "all" or inventory_hostname _is in any of item.servers_ # what if item.servers is a list?