ansible-lint --fix munges ansible-galaxy role init meta/main.yml indentation

[jeffmcutter]

Summary

If you generate an Ansible role using the ansible-galaxy role init command, it creates a default meta/main.yml file.

If you later run ansible-lint --fix against that role, it changes the comment indentation for the galaxy_tags section.

Issue Type

• Bug Report

OS / ENVIRONMENT

$ ansible-lint --version
ansible-lint 6.22.1 using ansible-core:2.16.0 ansible-compat:4.1.10 ruamel-yaml:0.18.5 ruamel-yaml-clib:0.2.8

• Fedora 39
• ansible installation method: OS package
• ansible-lint installation method: pip

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

ansible-galaxy role init test_role

check it into git or make a backup of meta/main.yml to diff

ansible-lint --fix test_role
git diff test_role

N/A

Desired Behavior

ansible-lint would keep the indentation of the meta/main.yml consistent.

Actual Behavior

The indentation of the comments for galaxy_tags is moved to the beginning of the line which is inconsistent with the rest of the meta/main.yml file.

diff --git i/roles/test_role4/meta/main.yml w/roles/test_role4/meta/main.yml
index c572acc..62bafb9 100644
--- i/roles/test_role4/meta/main.yml
+++ w/roles/test_role4/meta/main.yml
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+---
 galaxy_info:
   author: your name
   description: your role description
@@ -40,12 +41,12 @@ galaxy_info:
   #   - 99.99
 
   galaxy_tags: []
-    # List tags for your role here, one per line. A tag is a keyword that describes
-    # and categorizes the role. Users find roles by searching for tags. Be sure to
-    # remove the '[]' above, if you add tags to this list.
-    #
-    # NOTE: A tag is limited to a single word comprised of alphanumeric characters.
-    #       Maximum 20 tags per role.
+# List tags for your role here, one per line. A tag is a keyword that describes
+# and categorizes the role. Users find roles by searching for tags. Be sure to
+# remove the '[]' above, if you add tags to this list.
+#
+# NOTE: A tag is limited to a single word comprised of alphanumeric characters.
+#       Maximum 20 tags per role.
 
 dependencies: []
   # List your role dependencies here, one per line. Be sure to remove the '[]' above,

[jeffmcutter]

I opened an issue in ansible/ansible for this, initially thinking of updating the generated meta/main.yml file to be ansible-lint friendly.

ansible/ansible#82394

I'm not sure if that's viable, but I thought it was worth raising an issue here as well.

[nitzmahone]

I 100% agree that ignoring this is a substandard dev experience- if we're going to implement formatting rules, our own sample/skeleton content should probably pass it cleanly, one way or another.

That said, I assume the root cause of this issue is ruamel's invented comment-to-node mapping. Since comments are still officially not part of the YAML presentation stream (the meaty spec line there is "comments are not associated with a particular node"), ruamel's comment preservation/emission behavior defines its own extra-spec rules to make this work. IIRC, comments and whitespace-only lines on lines containing no YAML content are assumed to "belong" to the next node below them, and are thus force-aligned to that node by the emitter.

If my assumption above is correct, and we're just leaning on a round-trip through ruamel as the SoT for the ansible-lint rule in question, it makes me slightly nervous that those rules are at the whim of a non-YAML-spec implementation that's not necessarily stable. I don't really have a problem adjusting the core skeleton for this case (ala something like ansible/ansible#82529), but bigger-picture, before we completely delegate that off to ruamel, can we see if there's a reasonable way to ignore comment-only line changes in the rule (at least where there's >0 empty lines before the node it wants to align with)? The role metadata skeleton case is borderline anyway, so I don't really care about changing that one as-proposed, but there may be legitimate cases where this rule will force users to change comment indentation in ways that negatively affect readability.