How can I hide skipped tasks output in Ansible

Question

I have Ansible role, for example

---
- name: Deploy app1
  include: deploy-app1.yml
  when: 'deploy_project == "{{app1}}"'

- name: Deploy app2
  include: deploy-app2.yml
  when: 'deploy_project == "{{app2}}"'

But I deploy only one app in one role call. When I deploy several apps, I call role several times. But every time there is a lot of skipped tasks output (from tasks which do not pass condition), which I do not want to see. How can I avoid it?

Answer 1

Ansible allows you to control its output by using custom callbacks.

In this case you can simply use the skippy callback which will not output anything on a skipped task.

Answer 2

I'm assuming you don't want to see the skipped tasks in the output while running Ansible.

Set this to false in the ansible.cfg file.

display_skipped_hosts = false

Note. It will still output the name of the task although it will not display "skipped" anymore.

UPDATE: by the way you need to make sure ansible.cfg is in the current working directory.

Taken from the ansible.cfg file.

ansible will read ANSIBLE_CONFIG, ansible.cfg in the current working directory, .ansible.cfg in the home directory or /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg, whichever it finds first.

So ensure you are setting display_skipped_hosts = false in the right ansible.cfg file.

Let me know how you go

Answer 3

Since ansible 2.4, a callback plugin name full_skip was added to suppress the skipping of task names and skipping keyword in the ansible output. You can try the below ansible configuration:

[defaults]
stdout_callback = full_skip

Answer 4

If you don't mind losing colours you can elide the skipped tasks by piping the output through sed:

ansible-playbook whatever.yml | sed -nr '/^TASK/{h;n;/^skipping:/{n;b};H;x};p'

Answer 5

If you are using roles, you can use when to cancel the include in main.yml

# roles/myrole/tasks/main.yml
- include: somefile.yml
  when: somevar is defined


# roles/myrole/tasks/somefile.yml
- name: this task will only run (and be seen in the output) if somevar is defined
  debug:
    msg: "Hello World"