Using A Forked Ansible Galaxy Role

Using a forked ansible galaxy role

Occasionally there may be a need to fix something in an ansible galaxy role, and use your fixed fork instead of the original role. Luckily since ansible galaxy introduced using YAML files to configure dependencies, this is simple enough to do.

Updating your requirements.yml

Lets say we’re customising one of Geerlingguy’s roles, usually we’d have the following in our requirements.yml:

- src: geerlingguy.php
  version: 1.8.1

To use our fork, all we need to do is change the src over to our fork, and set the name to match the original role:

- src: https://github.com/lewisw/ansible-role-php
  name: geerlingguy.php

Using a specific branch

I personally like to keep all my fixes on a separate branch, so I can submit them as pull requests, so to use a specific branch just use version:

- src: https://github.com/lewisw/ansible-role-php
  name: geerlingguy.php
  version: remotes/origin/configurable-pool-path

Updating ansible galaxy

Then you’ll need to re-run the ansible galaxy install command like so:

ansible-galaxy install -f -r requirements.yml

Note: The -f will force the reinstallation of your roles. It probably isn’t necessary for ansible galaxy to pick-up your changes, but just to be on the safe side I always include it.

Done

That’s all, happy forking!