How to continue execution on failed task after fixing error in playbook?

Question

When writing and debugging Ansible playbooks, typical workflow is as follows:

1. ansible-playbook ./main.yaml
2. Playbook fails on some task
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Answer 1

Future readers:

The --limit @/home/user/site.retry would not help in such a scenario, the .retry only stores the failed host and nothing more, so will just execute all tasks against failed hosts.

If you are using the latest version (Ansible 2.x) the --start-at-task does not work for tasks defined inside roles.

You can achieve similar effect by just using the --step flag e.g: ansible-playbook playbook.yml --step. The step asks you on before executing each task and you could choose (N)o/(y)es/(c)ontinue.

With this approach you selectively execute tasks when needed and also continue from point where it failed, after fixes.