Question posted in 
CentOS 8 does not always come with Python pre-installed, and so Ansible will fail running on the remote machine until it’s been installed. However in a classic Chicken/Egg, you can’t use the Ansible dnf module to install Python.
I’ve been using:
- name: Install Python 3
raw: dnf -y install python3
However the problem with this is that I either have to set changed_when: false or it will always return a changed state. I’d like the state reported properly if it’s possible.
I found easy_install however this appears to only deal with Python Libraries, and not Python itself. Is there a built-in way to handle this or is raw: the only option?
2
Answers
As it goes, there is no simple answer, the truth is that if Python is not installed, the only method to get it installed with Ansible is to use the
raw:method. Here is the answer I was provided at ServerFault... https://serverfault.com/questions/1016870/what-is-the-prefered-method-to-install-python-with-ansible-on-centos-8This is incorrect. CentOS 8 comes with platform-python out of the box, which Ansible >= 2.8 will use by default.
https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2018/11/14/python-in-rhel-8-3
https://www.ansible.com/blog/integrating-ansible-and-red-hat-enterprise-linux-8-beta
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/reference_appendices/interpreter_discovery.html
Happy automating!