Feature: Allow overwriting of 'gitlab_runner_install_directory'

[nicoklaus]

Under Windows, it is a common practice to use different partitions or hard disks to prevent applications from overloading the main hard disk and crashing the system. GitLab Runner is also a good candidate to fill up the disk and crash the computer. Therefore, it would be helpful to install it on a separate hard disk, but at the moment this is not possible due to variable precedence.

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/playbook_guide/playbooks_variables.html#understanding-variable-precedence

Therefore, the installation directory should be moved to the defaults and then this can be changed in the inventory for each host or globally.

[guenhter]

I guess your problem is to not being able to override this particular variable? If so, this is true for all variables which are included with include_vars. Instead of moving variables from the platform specific files to this general one and pollute it that way, we should think of a (clever) way to make platform-specific variables also overridable.

[nicoklaus]

I don't think this is a general problem for all variables in this file, as they only represent the “default”. But the location where I want to install something should be definable from my point of view, it would also be possible that Windows has no C: drive at all. Since Ansible has variable precedence, I don't think there will be a clever way around this, or maybe it shouldn't be implemented.

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/playbook_guide/playbooks_variables.html#variable-precedence-where-should-i-put-a-variable

It's also not impossible to override the platform specific variables like the download URL, but in this case I have to override them for each host, which is not possible once the precedence is higher than the host_vars.

@guenhter sorry for the late reply, the notification passed me by :/

[shock0572]

One straight up solution that comes to the mind is specializing the default vars to windows_gitlab_runner_install_directory but he's right in a way: we don't want to have the Windows directory fixed and it's only used in the windows playbook

[guenhter]

I posted this to the ansible forum

https://forum.ansible.com/t/include-default-variables-based-on-conditions/8433/2

and there could be one interesting solution:

mysql_community_packages: "{{ lookup('ansible.builtin.vars', 'mysql_community_packages_' + os_version, default='mysql-server') }}"
mysql_community_packages_redhat9:
  - mysql
  - mysql-server
  - mysql-common

I'll give this a try when time and come back to you

[nicoklaus]

Is there any news ?

[guenhter]

Sorry, I didn't have the time yet to try that out.

[nicoklaus]

Hey @guenhter, I looked at it again and tried a different approach, this one, as you mentioned, leaves the default through the platform defaults but allows overriding. It is also used by other platform variables like in https://github.com/riemers/ansible-gitlab-runner/blob/master/defaults/main.yml#L15.

This issue is a bit of a pain in the ass for me as every time I update the local role, the first deployment reinstalls gitlab-runner on many machines as I haven't applied my workaround, and the playbook is on the wrong hard drive 😓.

[guenhter]

Could you please resolve the conflicts to make this mergable.

[guenhter]

I've merged this one for you, so that you can work without the annoying issues.
If I find the time to investigate more about the other solution, this fix might change.

[nicoklaus]

Thanks a lot @guenhter 😄