To use this, first install cookiecutter, then run cookiecutter git+https://hub.cybercinch.nz/guisea/cookiecutter-ansible-role and answer the prompts.

Development Workflow

Molecule uses Docker by default to spin up local containers for testing. I have created several containers work well for testing Ansible roles. Feel free to use them or change to your own in molecule/default/molecule.yml.

To test your role, you first need to install Molecule by running pip install molecule, or using your package manager of choice. You may also pip install molecule[docker] to also install the docker Python library, or pip install molecule[lint] to install ansible-lint, yamllint, and flake8.

Next, run molecule test. This will run the entire default test scenario, which creates a test container, runs the linters, runs the role twice, then destroys the container.

I frequently find I want to interact with the test instance rather than destroying it. To create a test instance, run your role, then leave the container running, run molecule converge. You can then interact with the container using molecule login. To rerun your role against the existing container, just run molecule converge again.

Once you are done with the container, run molecule destroy to remove it.

Customizing the Test

The default scenario runs molecule/default/converge.yml. You can customize this playbook to suit your needs.

The molecule.yml file is setup to accept three environment variables:

MOLECULE_DISTRIBUTION: controls the distribution to test against MOLECULE_COMMAND: the command to run inside the container MOLECULE_PLAYBOOK: the name of the playbook to run

Valid values for MOLECULE_DISTRIBUTION based on how I name my test containers are: - centos7 - centos8 (the default) - ubuntu16 - ubuntu18 - ubuntu20 - debian9 - debian10 - fedora30 - fedora31

For example, to test your role on Debian 10, run env MOLECULE_DISTRIBUTION=debian10 molecule test.

Thanks

A special thank you to Jeff Geerling for being a trailblazer with Molecule (and Ansible role testing in general). I would be lost without his amazing work.