System specific variables in ansible

Question

Ansible expects python 2. On my system (Arch Linux), "python" is Python 3, so I have to pass -e "ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python2" with every command.

ansible-playbook my-playbook.yml -e "ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python2" 

Is there a away to set ansible_python_interpreter globally on my system, so I don't have to pass it to every command? I don't want to add it to my playbooks, as not all systems that runs the playbook has a setup similar to mine.

Answer 1

I opted to use Ansible's ability to source inventory from a directory. In this manner I could define the ansible_python_interpreter for localhost only for the local machine

inventory_dir/local

[local] localhost ansible_python_interpreter="/path/to/alternate/bin/python" 

And then just use the directory as you would an inventory file.

ansible-playbook -i inventory_dir playbook.yml

Answer 2

Well you can set in three ways

1. http://docs.ansible.com/intro_inventory.html#list-of-behavioral-inventory-parameters ansible_python_interpreter=/usr/bin/python2 this will set it per host
2. Set it host_vars/ ansible_python_interpreter: "/usr/bin/python2" this will set it per host
3. set it for all nodes in the file group_vars/all (you may need to create the directory group_vars and the file all) as ansible_python_interpreter: "/usr/bin/python2"

Hope that helps