Ansible role does not read templates in playbook dir or other role's templates dir

Question

I am new to Ansible and Jinja2. Any help would be appreciated!

• Ansible version: 2.4.1
• Execution environment: Windows bash
• Test sample: https://bitbucket.org/tsz662/jinja-test

Problem

Ansible does not recognize Jinja templates located in another role when the including role is specified by absolute path.

Directory structure

 .
    ├── files
    │   └── test_2.yml
    ├── hosts
    ├── roles
    │   ├── common_role
    │   │   ├── tasks
    │   │   │   └── main.yml
    │   │   ├── templates
    │   │   │   └── common.j2
    │   │   └── vars
    │   │       └── main.yml
    │   └── role_A
    │       ├── tasks
    │       │   └── main.yml
    │       └── templates
    │           ├── mytemplate_2.j2
    │           └── mytemplate.j2
    └── site.yml

site.yml

- hosts: all
  connection: local
  gather_facts: no
  roles:
    - common_role
    - role_A

role_A/tasks/main.yml

- name: test relative path
  template:
    src: mytemplate.j2
    dest: "{{playbook_dir}}/files/test_1.yml"

- name: test absolute path
  template:
    src: mytemplate_2.j2
    dest: "{{playbook_dir}}/files/test_2.yml"

role_A/templates/mytemplate.j2

{% include 'roles/common_role/templates/common.j2' %}
msg: I am mytemplate.j2 and including {{common_templates}}.

role_A/templates/mytemplate_2.j2

{% include playbook_dir + 'roles/common_role/templates/common.j2' %}
msg: I am mytemplate_2.j2 and including {{common_templates}}.

Execution result

tsz@mylaptop:/mnt/c/Users/tsz/jinja-test$ ansible-playbook -i hosts site.yml

PLAY [all] **************************************************************

TASK [role_A : test relative path] ***************************************
changed: [localhost]

TASK [role_A : test absolute path] ***************************************
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "failed": true, "msg": "TemplateNotFound: /mnt/c/Users/tsz/jinja-test/roles/common_role/templates/common.j2"}
    to retry, use: --limit @/mnt/c/Users/tsz/jinja-test/site.retry

PLAY RECAP ***************************************************************
localhost                  : ok=1    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=1

File permissions

tsz@mylaptop:/mnt/c/Users/tsz/jinja-test$ ls -al roles/common_role/templates
total 13
drwxrwxrwx 0 root root 4096 Nov 10 15:56 .
drwxrwxrwx 0 root root 4096 Nov 10 16:04 ..
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root   23 Nov 10 15:57 common.j2

tsz@mylaptop:/mnt/c/Users/tsz/jinja-test$ ls -al roles/role_A/templates
total 129
drwxrwxrwx 0 root root 4096 Nov 10 16:00 .
drwxrwxrwx 0 root root 4096 Nov 10 15:59 ..
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root  133 Nov 10 16:40 mytemplate_2.j2
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root  115 Nov 10 16:11 mytemplate.j2

Answer 1

I think this isn't going to work with the current version of jinja. My suspicion is that you can't use literal paths because they include directories outside the role space. c.f. this thread.

Someone please prove me wrong. I'm out of time to test it, but it could easily be an artifact of the odd environment setup I have to use.

The template:

$: cat roles/example/templates/tst
stuff etc
{% include '/full/path/redacted/roles/example/templates/other' %}

The included template exists:

$ ls -l /full/path/redacted/roles/example/templates/other
-rw-r--r-- 1 jenkins jenkins 180 Nov 10 10:06 /full/path/redacted/roles/example/templates/other

The output:

TemplateNotFound: /full/path/redacted/roles/example/templates/other

Sorry I couldn't be more help.