Ansible notify handlers in another role

Question

Can I notify the handler in another role? What should I do to make ansible find it?

The use case is, e.g. I want to configure some service and then restart it if changed. Different OS have probably different files to edit and even the file format can be different. So I would like to put them into different roles (because the file format can be different, it can't be done by setting group_vars). But the way to restart the service is the same, using service module; so I'd like to put the handler to common role.

Is anyway to achieve this? Thanks.

Answer 1

You can also call handlers of a dependency role. May be cleaner than including files or explicitly listing roles in a playbook just for the purpose of role to role relationship. E.g.:

• roles/my-handlers/handlers/main.yml

  --- - name: nginx restart   service: >     name=nginx     state=restarted 

• roles/my-other/meta/main.yml

  --- dependencies: - role: my-handlers 

• roles/my-other/tasks/main.yml

  --- - copy: >     src=nginx.conf     dest=/etc/nginx/   notify: nginx restart