How can I skip role in Ansible?

Question

I have this playbook:

  roles:
    - { role: common}
    - { role: mariadb}
    - { role: wordpress}

What is want is in every role I want to have first task as some conditional which if true then I want to skip the whole role and playbook continues to next.

Now I can use when like this:

  roles:
    - { role: common, when: mvar is False }

But for that I have to evaluate the mvar in playbook itself but for that mvar I need all other vars etc. stuff which is in that role itself. So it will be easier for me to do in role.

Is there any way?

Answer 1

In each role, in tasks/main.yml include a file with tasks only when the condition is met:

- include: real_tasks.yml
  when: condition_is_met

Answer 2

In addition to @techraf's answer, one can also use include_tasks instead of include.

- include_tasks: real_tasks.yml
  when: condition_is_met

Ansible include documentation says:

Notes

Include has some unintuitive behaviours depending on if it is running in a static or dynamic in play or in playbook context, in an effort to clarify behaviours we are moving to a new set modules (include_tasks, include_role, import_playbook, import_tasks) that have well established and clear behaviours. This module will still be supported for some time but we are looking at deprecating it in the near future.