how to stop Ansible task successfully, not failing?

Question

I've searched for examples on how to stop execution of an Ansible task without failing it.

A straightforward example:

- name: check file
  stat: path={{some_path}}
  register: check_file_result

- name: if file exists, stop
  **fail**: msg="file exists, stopping"
  when: check_file_result.stat.exists

This works as in it stops the execution, but fails with tons of red flavoured text probably stopping whole playbook from running further tasks. Is there a way to stop the execution as if all of it ended with "OK"?

Note: Workaround is to simply add "when: check_file_result.stat.exists == false", but this scales very poorly.

Answer 1

If there are multiple tasks you don't want to execute when check_file_result.stat.exists then I would probably encapsulate all those tasks in a separate file and then conditionally include that file, e.g.

- name: check file
  stat: path={{ some_path }}
  register: check_file_result

- include: file_ops.yml
  when: check_file_result.stat.exists

Example directory structure:

|- roles/
  |- foo
    |- tasks
      |- main.yml
      |- file_ops.yml
    |- vars
      |- main.yml

Using this method is DRY :-)