How can I hide skipped tasks output in Ansible - plugins

Question

I have Ansible role, for example
---
- name: Deploy app1
include: deploy-app1.yml
when: 'deploy_project == "{{app1}}"'
- name: Deploy app2
include: deploy-app2.yml
when: 'deploy_project == "{{app2}}"'
But I deploy only one app in one role call. When I deploy several apps, I call role several times. But every time there is a lot of skipped tasks output (from tasks which do not pass condition), which I do not want to see. How can I avoid it?

Answer 1

I'm assuming you don't want to see the skipped tasks in the output while running Ansible.
Set this to false in the ansible.cfg file.
display_skipped_hosts = false
Note. It will still output the name of the task although it will not display "skipped" anymore.
UPDATE: by the way you need to make sure ansible.cfg is in the current working directory.
Taken from the ansible.cfg file.
ansible will read ANSIBLE_CONFIG,
ansible.cfg in the current working directory, .ansible.cfg in
the home directory or /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg, whichever it
finds first.
So ensure you are setting display_skipped_hosts = false in the right ansible.cfg file.
Let me know how you go

Answer 2

Since ansible 2.4, a callback plugin name full_skip was added to suppress the skipping of task names and skipping keyword in the ansible output. You can try the below ansible configuration:
[defaults]
stdout_callback = full_skip

Answer 3

Ansible allows you to control its output by using custom callbacks.
In this case you can simply use the skippy callback which will not output anything on a skipped task.
That said, skippy is now deprecated and will be removed in ansible v2.11.

Answer 4

If you don't mind losing colours you can elide the skipped tasks by piping the output through sed:
ansible-playbook whatever.yml | sed -nr '/^TASK/{h;n;/^skipping:/{n;b};H;x};p'

Answer 5

If you are using roles, you can use when to cancel the include in main.yml
# roles/myrole/tasks/main.yml
- include: somefile.yml
when: somevar is defined
# roles/myrole/tasks/somefile.yml
- name: this task will only run (and be seen in the output) if somevar is defined
debug:
msg: "Hello World"