Simplify Ansible Output with the community.general.dense Callback Plugin

Optimizing Output with community.general.dense Callback Plugin

Introduction

Ansible, an open-source automation tool, simplifies complex IT tasks by orchestrating configuration management, application deployment, and task automation. One of the essential features of Ansible is its ability to provide feedback on the tasks it performs through output messages. In certain scenarios, especially when dealing with large-scale automation or integrating Ansible with other tools, reducing the verbosity of the output becomes crucial. This is where Ansible callback plugins come into play.

Understanding Ansible Inventory and Playbooks

Before diving into callback plugins, let’s quickly revisit the basic components of an Ansible setup: the inventory file and playbooks.

Inventory

The inventory file defines the hosts on which Ansible will perform tasks. In the example, we see a simple inventory file with the localhost defined as the target host.

# inventory
localhost ansible_connection=local