Ansible variable assignment

Question

I want to run a role 10 times in a playbook and only on the 5th run of that role, I want it to run the second shell cmd from within that role. How can I address that? Playbook:

- name: bla bla
  hosts: ALL
  remote_user: root
  vars:
     some_variable: 0
  roles:
    - role: nonreg
  whentorun:
    - post

The actual role is this:

- name: basic
  shell: /scripts/nonReg/expoNonRegTest.sh {{ item }}
  {{ some variable }} ++ ???
  with_items: "{{ whentorun }}"
- name: on 5th run
  shell: /scripts/nonReg/expoNonRegTest.sh diff
  when: {{ some variable }} == 5 ????

How can I do that? How can I declare a variable and assign a value to it (during the run o a role/playbook)? What is the syntax ? In the ansible documentation, at variables, there isn't a simple example of how can you assign a value to a variable (not with register :P)

Answer 1

You can use the set_fact module to increment your variable:

- set_fact: some_variable={{ some_variable | int + 1 }}

Your condition for running the extra task then should look like this:

  when: some_variable | int == 5

Make sure you always cast the value to an int with | int or it will be handled as a string.