Override hosts variable of Ansible playbook from the command line

Question

This is a fragment of a playbook that I\'m using (server.yml):

- name: Determine Remote User
  hosts: web
  gather_facts: false
  roles:
    - {         


        

Answer 1

I am using ansible 2.5 (2.5.3 exactly), and it seems that the vars file is loaded before the hosts param is executed. So you can set the host in a vars.yml file and just write hosts: {{ host_var }} in your playbook

For example, in my playbook.yml:

---
- hosts: "{{ host_name }}"
  become: yes
  vars_files:
    - vars/project.yml
  tasks:
    ... 

And inside vars/project.yml:

---

# general
host_name: your-fancy-host-name