Check Ansible version from inside of a playbook

Question

I have a playbook that is running in different way in Ansible 1.9.x and 2.0. I would like to check currently running ansible version in my playbook to avoid someone running it with old one.

I don't think that this is the best solution:

- local_action: command ansible --version
  register: version

What would you suggest?

Answer 1

Ansible provides a global dict called ansible_version, dict contains the following

"ansible_version": {
        "full": "2.7.4", 
        "major": 2, 
        "minor": 7, 
        "revision": 4, 
        "string": "2.7.4"
    }

you can use any of the following ansible_version.full, ansible_version.major or any other combination in creating conditional statements to check the version of ansible that's installed.

example playbook: using this dict and a when statement.

---
- hosts: localhost
  tasks:

    - name: Print message if ansible version is greater than 2.7.0
      debug:
        msg: "Ansible version is  {{ ansible_version.full }}"
      when: ansible_version.full >= "2.7.4"

Answer 2

You can use the assert module:

- assert:
    that: ansible_version.major < 2