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name

This rule identifies several problems related to the naming of tasks and plays. This is important because these names are the primary way to identify and document executed operations on the console, logs or web interface.

This rule can produce messages as:

  • name[casing] - All names should start with an uppercase letter for languages that support it.
  • name[missing] - All tasks should be named.
  • name[play] - All plays should be named.
  • name[prefix] - Prefix task names in sub-tasks files. (opt-in)
  • name[template] - Jinja templates should only be at the end of 'name'. This helps with the identification of tasks inside the source code when they fail. The use of templating inside name keys is discouraged as there are multiple cases where the rendering of the name template is not possible.

If you want to ignore some of the messages above, you can add any of them to the skip_list.

name[prefix]

This rule applies only to included task files that are not named main.yml. It suggests adding the stem of the file as a prefix to the task name.

For example, if you have a task named Restart server inside a file named tasks/deploy.yml, this rule suggests renaming it to deploy | Restart server, so it would be easier to identify where it comes from.

For the moment, this sub-rule is just an opt-in, so you need to add it to your enable_list to activate it.

Note

This rule was designed by Red Hat Community of Practice. The reasoning behind it being that in a complex roles or playbooks with multiple (sub-)tasks file, it becomes difficult to understand which task belongs to which file. Adding a prefix, in combination with the role’s name automatically added by Ansible, makes it a lot easier to follow and troubleshoot a role play.

Problematic code

---
- hosts: localhost # <-- playbook name[play]
  tasks:
    - name: create placefolder file # <-- name[casing] due lack of capital letter
      ansible.builtin.command: touch /tmp/.placeholder

Correct code

---
- name: Play for creating placeholder
  hosts: localhost
  tasks:
    - name: Create placeholder file
      ansible.builtin.command: touch /tmp/.placeholder

Note

name[casing] can be automatically fixed using --fix option.