Tags

When you apply tags to things, you can then control whether they’re executed by adding command line options.

How to tag things

Plays and tasks have optional tags attributes where you can specify a list of tags. Here are some tagged Task s:

tasks:
    - module: parm1=a parm2=b
      tags:
         - packages

    - module2: parm1=x parm2=y
      tags:
         - configuration

And here’s a playbook with some tagged Play s:

- hosts: all
  tags:
    - foo
    - bar
  roles:
    - role1
    - role2

You can also apply tags when invoking a role from a playbook:

roles:
  - { role: webserver, port: 5000, tags: [ 'web', 'foo' ] }

and when including tasks:

- include: foo.yml
  tags: [web,foo]

What tags do

Adding a tag to a play or task says that if ansible is invoked with --tags=x,y,z, that the tagged play or task will only be executed if at least one of its tags is included in the list of tags from the command line.

Specifying --tags=all is equivalent to the default behavior, where all playbooks and tasks are run regardless of their tags.

Specifying --tags=tagged runs only things that have some tag, while --tags=untagged runs only things that have no tag.

You could alternatively invoke ansible with --skip-tags=a,b,c and it will execute all plays and tasks that are not tagged with a, b, or c.

Presumably --skip-tags=tagged does the opposite of --tags=tagged, and --skip-tags=untagged does the opposite of --tags=untagged.

If a play or task is tagged always, then it will be executed unless ansible is invoked with skip-tags=always.