Ansible: copy a directory content to another directory

Question

You could use the synchronize module. The example from the documentation:

# Synchronize two directories on one remote host.
- synchronize:
    src: /first/absolute/path
    dest: /second/absolute/path
  delegate_to: "{{ inventory_hostname }}"

This has the added benefit that it will be more efficient for large/many files.

EDIT: This solution worked when the question was posted. Later Ansible deprecated recursive copying with remote_src

Ansible Copy module by default copies files/dirs from control machine to remote machine. If you want to copy files/dirs in remote machine and if you have Ansible 2.0, set remote_src to yes

- name: copy html file
  copy: src=/home/vagrant/dist/ dest=/usr/share/nginx/html/ remote_src=yes directory_mode=yes

Resolved answer: To copy a directory's content to another directory I use the next:

- name: copy consul_ui files
  command: cp -r /home/{{ user }}/dist/{{ item }} /usr/share/nginx/html
  with_items:
   - "index.html"
   - "static/"

It copies both items to the other directory. In the example, one of the items is a directory and the other is not. It works perfectly.

To copy a directory's content to another directory you can use ansibles copy module:

- name: Copy content of directory 'files'
  copy:
    src: files/    # note the '/' <-- !!!
    dest: /tmp/files/

From the docs about the src parameter:

If (src!) path is a directory, it is copied recursively...
... if path ends with "/", only inside contents of that directory are copied to destination.
... if it does not end with "/", the directory itself with all contents is copied.

The simplest solution I've found to copy the contents of a folder without copying the folder itself is to use the following:

- name: Move directory contents
  command: cp -r /<source_path>/. /<dest_path>/

This resolves @surfer190's follow-up question:

Hmmm what if you want to copy the entire contents? I noticed that * doesn't work – surfer190 Jul 23 '16 at 7:29

* is a shell glob, in that it relies on your shell to enumerate all the files within the folder before running cp, while the . directly instructs cp to get the directory contents (see https://askubuntu.com/questions/86822/how-can-i-copy-the-contents-of-a-folder-to-another-folder-in-a-different-directo)

Ansible remote_src does not support recursive copying.See remote_src description in Ansible copy docs

To recursively copy the contents of a folder and to make sure the task stays idempotent I usually do it this way:

- name: get file names to copy
  command: "find /home/vagrant/dist -type f"
  register: files_to_copy

- name: copy files
  copy:
    src: "{{ item }}" 
    dest: "/usr/share/nginx/html"
    owner: nginx
    group: nginx
    remote_src: True
    mode: 0644
  with_items:
   - "{{ files_to_copy.stdout_lines }}"

Downside is that the find command still shows up as 'changed'

the ansible doc is quite clear https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/ansible/builtin/copy_module.html for parameter src it says the following:

Local path to a file to copy to the remote server.
This can be absolute or relative.
If path is a directory, it is copied recursively. In this case, if path ends with "/", 
only inside contents of that directory are copied to destination. Otherwise, if it 
does not end with "/", the directory itself with all contents is copied. This behavior 
is similar to the rsync command line tool.

So what you need is skip the / at the end of your src path.

- name: copy html file
  copy: src=/home/vagrant/dist dest=/usr/share/nginx/html/