Play Ansible Playbook

Version updated for https://github.com/arillso/action.playbook to version 0.5.0.

  • This action is used across all versions by 158 repositories.

Action Type

This is a Docker action.

Go to the GitHub Marketplace to find the latest changes.

Action Summary

The “Play Ansible Playbook” GitHub Action automates the execution of Ansible playbooks within GitHub Actions workflows, streamlining infrastructure and configuration management tasks. It supports key features like Ansible Galaxy integration, secure SSH authentication, Ansible Vault handling, and flexible configuration options for inventory, variables, and tags. This action simplifies complex deployment processes, enhances automation, and provides robust tools for managing infrastructure as code.

Release notes

Added

  • known_hosts input for SSH host key verification
  • dry_run input as alias for --check --diff mode
  • Action outputs for status and exit_code
  • Auto-detection of Galaxy requirements file (requirements.yml / requirements.yaml)
  • GitHub Step Summary with Ansible execution results
  • vault_password_file input — auto-creates vault password file from secret
  • Retry mechanism for playbook execution via retries and retry_delay inputs
  • Optional ansible-lint pre-check via lint input
  • output_file input to capture Ansible stdout to a file
  • Support for multiple SSH keys via additional_private_keys input
  • SSH agent support for bastion/proxy host connections — private keys are now loaded into ssh-agent, making them available to ProxyCommand and multi-hop SSH
  • Passphrase-protected SSH key support via private_key_passphrase input using SSH_ASKPASS
  • Multiline YAML syntax for inventory, playbook, extra_vars, and module_path inputs (closes #18)
  • output_callback input to configure the Ansible stdout callback plugin
  • Comprehensive unit test suite (main_test.go) covering parameter validation, SSH agent lifecycle, passphrase handling, and input normalization
  • Comprehensive action input tests for all new features
  • CONTRIBUTING.md with development guidelines
  • Tooling configs: .gitleaks.toml, .grype.yaml, .trivy.yaml, .checkov.yml, .pre-commit-config.yaml, .secretlintrc.json, .markdownlint.json, .markdown-link-check.json, .jscpd.json, .kics.json

Changed

  • Major: Upgraded go.ansible from v1.x to v2.0.0
  • Ansible exit codes are now passed through to the GitHub Action exit code
  • SSH agent failure is now a hard error instead of silent fallback
  • Pinned Docker image tag in action.yml from latest to 0.4
  • Renamed callback_whitelist to callbacks_enabled (deprecated alias still supported)
  • Migrated CI/CD workflows to reusable arillso/.github workflows
  • Modernized Makefile with structured targets
  • Updated Dockerfile builder to Go 1.26
  • Stripped binary build (-ldflags="-s -w") for smaller image size
  • Extracted CLI flags to package-level appFlags variable for testability

Removed

  • Removed unused flags: module-name, invalidate-cache, requirements, module-default, metadata-export
  • Removed parseModuleDefaults helper function

Updated

  • arillso/ansible Docker image to v2.20.3
  • github.com/urfave/cli/v3 from v3.6.1 to v3.7.0
  • GitHub Actions dependencies (v4, v6, v7)
  • golang:alpine Docker digest