‘until’ can take a list in Ansible

Today I found a small, but valuable improvement for ‘until’ statement. It can be a list, and all values in the list must be truthful to have a success termination for the task.

---
- hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
   - shell: /bin/bash -c 'echo $RANDOM'
     register: res
     until:
        - res.stdout|int > 10000
        - res.stdout|int < 20000
     delay: 1
     retries: 10
   - debug: var=res

This playbook will print res in range of 10000–20000, or fail with timeout in unlucky event.

There are two checks: res is > 10000 AND res < 20000.

Up to the moment I would write it as much uglier statement:

until: res.stdout|int > 10000 and res.stdout|int < 20000

The key issue with ‘and’ is that it stacks really badly with multiple conditions, and if there is a need for quotes or brackets, the whole line quickly become a jinja-mess.

Using a list of conditions in this place makes code way more readable.