Trying to split my Ansible playbook based on the Operating System - ansible

Question

I have a playbook which needs to be run based on the operating System.
UseCase: Lets assume there is a service that is running.
On Linux we can check if it is installed and running using the
systemctl status application.service
While command and on windows we will be using the
sc query "ServiceName" | find "RUNNING"
Now we have to install it based on the output of the above a commands which requires us to segregate the playbook based on the OS.
Classic Example: Create a directory based on the OS
- name: Install QCA Agent on Linux targets
hosts: all
gather_facts: true
remote_user: root
tasks:
- name: Create Directory for Downloading Qualys Cloud Agent
sudo: yes
sudo_user: root
file:
path: /usr/q1/
state: directory
owner: root
group: root
mode: 0777
recurse: no
- name: Create Directory for Downloading Qualys Cloud Agent
win_file:
path: c:\q1
state: directory
owner: Administrator
group: Administrator
mode: 0777
recurse: no
The playbook will alwayz be successful only if one of the condition is met and it is whether it is Windows or Unix OS. I can alwayz add a condition which will prompt based on:
when: ansible_distribution == 'Redhat' or ansible_distribution == 'CentOS'
However what i would like to achieve is based on a condition it should trigger my playbook.yml file.
name: Load a variable file based on the OS type, or a default if not found. Using free-form to specify the file.
include_vars: "{{ item }}"
with_first_found:
- "{{ ansible_distribution }}.yaml"
- "{{ ansible_os_family }}.yaml"
- default.yaml
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/2.5/modules/include_vars_module.html?highlight=with_first_found
I would like to know if there is a better example explaining the same that i could implement or if there are other ways to achieve the same.
Thank you,

Answer 1

The example you show from the Ansible docs is pretty much the best practice and is common in many playbooks (and roles for that matter) that deal with multiple OSes. If you have code that is different (instead of the variable example here), you'll be using include_tasks instead of include_vars, but the concept is the same.