Ansible troubleshooting — Error avoid-implicit

How to Solve the Ansible Error avoid-implicit and Avoiding Implicit Behaviors in Ansible

Introduction

Ansible is a powerful automation tool, but its flexibility can sometimes lead to unintended and implicit behaviors in your playbooks. These implicit behaviors are often undocumented, making it challenging to understand what’s happening behind the scenes. In this article, we’ll explore the “avoid-implicit” rule in Ansible and how you can follow best practices to avoid these implicit behaviors.

What is the “avoid-implicit” Rule?

The “avoid-implicit” rule is a part of Ansible’s linting tool that helps identify and flag the use of implicit behaviors within your playbooks. Implicit behaviors are actions that Ansible takes without explicit instructions, and they can lead to unpredictable outcomes or errors.

Common Implicit Behaviors

One common example of implicit behavior in Ansible is when using the ansible.builtin.copy module to write file content. While you might expect to provide content as a simple dictionary, Ansible can interpret this in…