Format output to list - ansible

Question

I'm working on an ansible playbook. I'm checking for new package patch versions of software, these versions are part of a list.
My code looks like this atm, credits for building the list goes to #Zeitounator
- name: get list of all supported version packages
shell: |
set -o pipefail
repoquery --cache --showduplicates --qf "%{VERSION}" --enablerepo xyz abc \
| grep -E -- "13." \
| sort --unique --version-sort
changed_when: false
register: versions
- name: get the major versions
set_fact:
major_versions: >-
{{
versions.stdout_lines
| map('regex_replace', '^(\d*\.\d*)\.\d*$', '\g<1>')
| unique
| sort
}}
- name: Create a consolidated list per major version
set_fact:
consolidated_versions: >-
{{
consolidated_versions | default([])
+
[{'major_version': item, 'patch_versions': versions.stdout_lines | select('contains', item) | list }]
}}
loop: "{{ major_versions }}"
My first task was to check the patch levels only through their corresponding major versions.
For example:
Check version 13.0.[1-10] only in folder 13.0, 13.1.[1-5] only in folder 13.1 etc.
This works as expected.
What I want to do now is to download only the latest package version of a major version, so I only need a list with the patch version numbers, like this:
13.0.10
13.1.5
13.2.2
I tried it with another set_fact
Like this:
- name: get latest patchversion of supported version
set_fact:
patch_version: "{{ consolidated_versions | json_query('[*].patch_versions[-1]') }}"
- name: output the last versions
debug:
var: patch_version
This gives me an output like this:
ok: [localhost] => {
"patch_version": [
"13.0.10",
"13.1.5",
"13.2.2"
]
}
This is indeed the data I need.
I need to use these 3 elements in a loop to download the packages like this:
- name: Download the files
get_url:
url: https://packages.xyz.com/abc/def/packages/el/{{ ansible_distribution_major_version }}/abc-def-{{ item }}-ee.0.el{{ ansible_distribution_major_version }}.x86_64.rpm/download.rpm
dest: /var/www/html/abc/{{ date }}/abc-def-{{ item }}-ee.0.el{{ ansible_distribution_major_version }}.x86_64.rpm
loop: "{{ patch_version }}"
Problem is now that ansible does not handle the fact as a list, so it replaces {{ patch_version }}with this: ['13.0.10', '13.1.5', '13.2.2']
Of course, this won't work.
How do I transform this output into a loopable list?
I already tried to make it a list, but then I got the whole output as a string as one element. How do I split this into a list like this:
- 13.0.10
- 13.1.5
- 13.2.2
?
Thanks in advance, I'm so confused.

Answer 1

I couldn't reproduce your problem because fact is handled as list in my ansible version (ansible 2.9.6, python 3.7.3).
Nevertheless, if fact is a string try to pass it through from_json filter:
loop: "{{ patch_version | from_json }}"
FWIW, you can check variable type piping it into type_debug:
- debug:
msg: "{{ patch_version | type_debug }}"

Answer 2

Fixed it by myself, not sure what the bug was, maybe just my mess ;).
For testing purposes I tried some things with with_nested and with loop.
So my code looked like this for a while:
- name: Download the files
get_url:
url: https://packages.xyz.com/abc/def/packages/el/{{ ansible_distribution_major_version }}/abc-def-{{ item }}-ee.0.el{{ ansible_distribution_major_version }}.x86_64.rpm/download.rpm
dest: /var/www/html/abc/{{ date }}/abc-def-{{ item }}-ee.0.el{{ ansible_distribution_major_version }}.x86_64.rpm
loop:
- "{{ patch_version }}"
# - commented out loop
# - another commented out loop
At this case the list seems to be read as a string.
So ansible replaces the variable with the all values as a string into my code.
After I changed the code to:
- name: Download the files
get_url:
url: https://packages.xyz.com/abc/def/packages/el/{{ ansible_distribution_major_version }}/abc-def-{{ item }}-ee.0.el{{ ansible_distribution_major_version }}.x86_64.rpm/download.rpm
dest: /var/www/html/abc/{{ date }}/abc-def-{{ item }}-ee.0.el{{ ansible_distribution_major_version }}.x86_64.rpm
loop: "{{ patch_version }}"
It worked as expected. Thanks for the hints, maybe my brain's a little bit confused after the whole day working on that playbook ;)