This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org: --- Title : log_vcs - Ansible callback plugin that creates VCS (git) branches for every Ansible run Author : Remy van Elst Date : 10-07-2018 URL : https://raymii.org/s/software/log_vcs_-_Ansible_Callback_plugin_that_creates_git_branches_for_every_ansible_run.html Format : Markdown/HTML --- This callback plugin creates a VCS branch every time you run Ansible. If you ever need to go back to a certain state or environment, check out that branch and be sure nothing has changed. This is useful when you have multiple environments or multiple people deploying and continually develop your Ansible. When you often deploy to test / acceptance and less often to production, you can checkout the last branch that deployed to production if a hotfix or other maintenance is required, without having to search back in your commits and logs. I would recommend to develop infrastructure features in feature branches and have the master branch always deployable to production. However, reality learns that that is not always the case and this is a nice automatic way to have a fallback.

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## Requirements and installation The plugin requires 'GitPython'. On Ubuntu this can be installed with the package manager: apt-get install python-git python3-git The plugin requires the Ansible folder to be a git repository. If you have a seperate 'roles' directory, that is not included in this plugin. The plugin is hosted on [Github: https://github.com/RaymiiOrg/log_vcs][2] To install the plugin, create a folder in your Ansible folder: mkdir -p plugins/callbacks Place the file in there and edit your `ansible.cfg` file: [defaults] callback_whitelist = log_vcs callback_plugins = plugins/callbacks ## Environments If you have multiple environments (multiple inventories) then every inventory needs a `group_var` (in `group_vars/all.yml`) named `environment`. The plugin uses this in the branch name. In my case it can be `dev`, `tst`, `acc`, `prd` or `mgmt`. It is not required, if it is not found the plugin will substitute it with `env`. ## Branch name format The branch name format is: auto-$year$month$dayT$hour$minute-$env-$branch-$username-$playbook-filename For example: auto-20180710T100719-env-master-remy-nginx-vps-for-raymii.org.yml or: auto-20180709T161235-tst-refactor-for-odoo-remy-odoo.yml auto-20180710T091419-prd-refactor-for-odoo-remy-ping.yml ## Auto-commit or cleanup? There is no auto-commit or auto-push to a git server. In my use-case deployment is always done from a management machine, otherwise you have to extend the plugin to do auto-commit and push. I decided in my case it would not be useful. Auto-cleanup is also not implemented. We have bash for that: git branch | grep 'auto-' | xargs -L 1 -I % git branch -d % [1]: https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=7435ae6b8212 [2]: https://github.com/RaymiiOrg/log_vcs --- License: All the text on this website is free as in freedom unless stated otherwise. This means you can use it in any way you want, you can copy it, change it the way you like and republish it, as long as you release the (modified) content under the same license to give others the same freedoms you've got and place my name and a link to this site with the article as source. This site uses Google Analytics for statistics and Google Adwords for advertisements. You are tracked and Google knows everything about you. Use an adblocker like ublock-origin if you don't want it. All the code on this website is licensed under the GNU GPL v3 license unless already licensed under a license which does not allows this form of licensing or if another license is stated on that page / in that software: This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see . Just to be clear, the information on this website is for meant for educational purposes and you use it at your own risk. I do not take responsibility if you screw something up. Use common sense, do not 'rm -rf /' as root for example. If you have any questions then do not hesitate to contact me. See https://raymii.org/s/static/About.html for details.