Ansible – Using Variables Across Plays Without Group/Host Vars in Ansible

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I have a variable that is very specific to a playbook, not necessarily tied to a host or host group.

I would like to declare this variable in the playbook itself, and have it shared between plays without having to redeclare.

Example below is a simple 2 play actions in a playbook. The variable "foo" isn't really related to the host or the host group, it's specific to the playbook internally, so I would like that var to stay local to the playbook.

- name: "Test1"
  hosts: localhost
  vars:
    foo: bar
  tasks:
    - name: "Debug1"
      ansible.builtin.debug:
        msg: " {{ foo }} "


- name: "Test2 - this will fail"
  hosts: localhost
  tasks:
    - name: "Debug2"
      ansible.builtin.debug:
        msg: "{{ foo }}"

I realize this example doesn't make logical sense to build like this split across plays for a single host. It's an ultra-simplified version of the actual problem I'm facing to demonstrate what I would like to do.

My question is this: Without creating new group_vars/host_vars files for "localhost", combining tasks to the single play, and without re-declaring the foo variable for each play, is there a way to make these plays share the foo variable?

Best Answer

Figured this out a few minutes after asking of course!

This works, using set_fact to make the variables persistent. This will only work if each play has a matching hosts: value

- name: "Test1"
  hosts: localhost
  vars:
    foo: bar
    zoo: zar
  tasks:
    - name: "Make host play variables persistent"
      ansible.builtin.set_fact:
        foo: "{{ foo }}"
        zoo: "{{ zoo }}"

- name: "Test2 - variables now exist in this play"
  hosts: localhost
  tasks:
    - name: "DebugFoo"
      ansible.builtin.debug:
        msg: "{{ foo }}"
    - name: "DebugZoo"
      ansible.builtin.debug:
        msg: "{{ zoo }}"
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