How do I exit Ansible play without error on a condition

Question

I want to exit without an error (I know about assert and fail modules) when I meet a certain condition. The following code exits but with a failure:

  tasks:

           


        

Answer 1

Lets use what Tymoteusz suggested for roles:

Split your play into two roles where first role will execute the check (and sets some variable holding check's result) and second one will act based on result of the check.

I have created aaa.yaml with this content:

---
- hosts: all
  remote_user: root
  roles:
    - check
    - { role: doit, when: "check.stdout == '0'" }
...

then role check in roles/check/tasks/main.yaml:

---
- name: "Check if we should continue"
  shell:
    echo $(( $RANDOM % 2 ))
  register: check
- debug:
    var: check.stdout
...

and then role doit in roles/doit/tasks/main.yaml:

---
- name: "Do it only on systems where check returned 0"
  command:
    date
...

And this was the output:

TASK [check : Check if we should continue] *************************************
Thursday 06 October 2016  21:49:49 +0200 (0:00:09.800)       0:00:09.832 ****** 
changed: [capsule.example.com]
changed: [monitoring.example.com]
changed: [satellite.example.com]
changed: [docker.example.com]

TASK [check : debug] ***********************************************************
Thursday 06 October 2016  21:49:55 +0200 (0:00:05.171)       0:00:15.004 ****** 
ok: [monitoring.example.com] => {
    "check.stdout": "0"
}
ok: [satellite.example.com] => {
    "check.stdout": "1"
}
ok: [capsule.example.com] => {
    "check.stdout": "0"
}
ok: [docker.example.com] => {
    "check.stdout": "0"
}

TASK [doit : Do it only on systems where check returned 0] *********************
Thursday 06 October 2016  21:49:55 +0200 (0:00:00.072)       0:00:15.076 ****** 
skipping: [satellite.example.com]
changed: [capsule.example.com]
changed: [docker.example.com]
changed: [monitoring.example.com]

It is not perfect: looks like you will keep seeing skipping status for all tasks for skipped systems, but might do the trick.