Ansible

This section documents our opinionated approach to writing, organizing, and operating Ansible code. It covers naming conventions, structural guidelines, state management, and everyday best practices that every engineer working on infrastructure automation should follow.

Sections

Section	Description
Project Structure	Repository layout and directory organization
Naming Conventions	Standardized role, task, and variable naming patterns
Module Design	Guidelines for writing and consuming Ansible modules
State Management	Idempotency principles and state tracking strategies
Variables & Outputs	Variable precedence, typing, and output conventions
Provider Configuration	SSH, WinRM, and cloud provider authentication setup
Anti-Patterns	Common mistakes and how to avoid them
CI/CD Pipeline	Workflow rules, linting, testing, and pipeline setup
Security & Compliance	Secrets handling, privilege escalation, and hardening

Guiding Principles

• Consistency Over Preference: Follow the patterns in this playbook even when you disagree. Raise a discussion to change the standard instead of diverging silently.
• Idempotency Always: Every task must be safe to run multiple times without changing the outcome after the first successful run.
• Least Privilege By Default: Use become only where strictly necessary. Prefer targeted privilege escalation over broad sudo access.
• Code Review Everything: No playbook runs directly against production from a developer machine. All changes go through CI/CD.