Ansible include task only if file exists

Question

I'm trying to include a file only if it exists. This allows for custom "tasks/roles" between existing "tasks/roles" if needed by the user of my role. I found this:

- include: ...   when: condition 

But the Ansible docs state that:

"All the tasks get evaluated, but the conditional is applied to each and every task" - http://docs.ansible.com/playbooks_conditionals.html#applying-when-to-roles-and-includes

So

- stat: path=/home/user/optional/file.yml   register: optional_file - include: /home/user/optional/file.yml   when: optional_file.stat.exists 

Will fail if the file being included doesn't exist. I guess there might be another mechanism for allowing a user to add tasks to an existing recipe. I can't let the user to add a role after mine, because they wouldn't have control of the order: their role will be executed after mine.

Answer 1

The with_first_found conditional can accomplish this without a stat or local_action. This conditional will go through a list of local files and execute the task with item set to the path of the first file that exists. Including skip: true on the with_first_found options will prevent it from failing if the file does not exist.

Example:

- hosts: localhost   connection: local   gather_facts: false    tasks:     - include: "{{ item }}"       with_first_found:         - files:             - /home/user/optional/file.yml           skip: true