How to specify ansible pretasks for a role?

Question

How should one go about defining a pretask for role dependencies. I currently have an apache role that has a user variable so in my own role in <role>/meta/main.yml I do something like:

--- dependencies:   - { role: apache, user: proxy } 

The problem at this point is that I still don't have the user I specify and when the role tries to start apache server under a non existent user, I get an error.

I tried creating a task in <role>/tasks/main.yml like:

--- - user: name=proxy 

But the user gets created only after running the apache task in dependencies (which is to be expected). So, is there a way to create a task that would create a user before running roles in dependencies?

Answer 1

I use the pre_tasks to do some tasks before roles, thanks for Kashyap.

#!/usr/bin/env ansible-playbook  --- - hosts: all   become: true   pre_tasks:     - name: start tasks and sent notifiaction to HipChat       hipchat:         color: purple         token: "{{ hipchat_token }}"         room: "{{ hipchat_room }}"         msg: "[Start] Run 'foo/setup.yml' playbook on {{ ansible_nodename }}."    roles:     - chusiang.vim-and-vi-mode    vars:     ...    tasks:     - name: include main task       include: tasks/main.yml    post_tasks:     - name: finish tasks and sent notifiaction to HipChat       hipchat:         color: green         token: "{{ hipchat_token }}"         room: "{{ hipchat_room }}"         msg: "[Finish] Run 'foo/setup.yml' playbook on {{ ansible_nodename }}."  # vim:ft=ansible : 

Answer 2

As of Ansible 2.2, you can use include_role. https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/include_role_module.html

- user: name=proxy  - include_role:     name: apache   vars:     user: proxy