Symlink plugin for Ansible

Synopsis

This Ansible plugin allows creating symlinks while optionally backing up the destination if it already exists and it isn't a symlink. This is particularly useful to replace default configuration files, when you don't want to just overwrite the default without a way to check it again in the future.

Installation

Go to your ansible's plugins directory and run the following commands:

git clone git@github.com:guillaumeaubert/ansible-symlink-plugin.git symlink

If you don't have a plugins directory, you can edit ansible.cfg to define defaults.library.

Options

Parameter	Required	Default	Choices	Comments
src	yes			Path of the file or directory to symlink to.
dest	yes			Remote absolute path where the symlink should be created.
archive	no	True	True False	This flag indicates whether a backup of the destination should be made, if the destination exists and is not a symlink.
archive_suffix	no	_original		If the destination needs to be archived, the file or directory will be renamed using this suffix.

Examples

# Archive /etc/apache2 to /etc/apache2.original if it exists and isn't already
# a symlink, then create a symlink /etc/apache2 pointing to /gitrepo/apache2.
- symlink:
    src="/gitrepo/apache2"
    dest="/etc/apache2"
    archive=True
    archive_suffix=.original

# Same as the above, with implicit defaults.
- symlink:
    src="/gitrepo/apache2"
    dest="/etc/apache2"

# Delete the destination if it exists (without making a backup), and create the
# symlink.
- symlink:
    src="/gitrepo/apache2"
    dest="/etc/apache2"
    archive=False

Copyright

Copyright (C) 2014-2016 Guillaume Aubert

License

This software is released under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for details.