How to sort complex version numbers in Ansible - sorting

Question

I'm building an Ansible playbook in which I want to retrieve the latest version of a software. For this I used "sort" filter in Ansible. That, however, becomes a bit harder, when using version numbers, that are more complex and are not really numbers, e.g. 0.2.1, 0.10.1.
This is what I'm doing right now:
- name: Set version to compare
set_fact:
versions:
- "0.1.0"
- "0.1.5"
- "0.11.11"
- "0.9.11"
- "0.9.3"
- "0.10.2"
- "0.6.1"
- "0.6.0"
- "0.11.0"
- "0.6.5"
- name: Sorted list
debug:
msg: "{{ versions | sort }}"
- name: Show the latest element
debug:
msg: "{{ versions | sort | last }}"
The playbook above works, as long as version numbers stay underneath the number 10 (e.g. 0.9.3, but not 0.10.2).
To show the issue:
TASK [Set version to compare] ***************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [Sorted list] **************************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
"msg": [
"0.1.0",
"0.1.5",
"0.10.2",
"0.11.0",
"0.11.11",
"0.6.0",
"0.6.1",
"0.6.5",
"0.9.11",
"0.9.3"
]
}
TASK [Show the latest element] **************************************************************************************************************
ok: [localhost] => {
"msg": "0.9.3"
}
In this example the value the desired value is 0.11.11
Does anyone know a good way to sort complex version numbers in Ansible?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

An option would be to write a filter plugin, e.g.
shell> cat filter_plugins/sort_versions.py
from distutils.version import LooseVersion
def filter_sort_versions(value):
return sorted(value, key=LooseVersion)
class FilterModule(object):
filter_sort = {
'sort_versions': filter_sort_versions,
}
def filters(self):
return self.filter_sort
Then the task below
- debug:
msg: "{{ versions | sort_versions }}"
gives
msg:
- 0.1.0
- 0.1.5
- 0.6.0
- 0.6.1
- 0.6.5
- 0.9.3
- 0.9.11
- 0.10.2
- 0.11.0
- 0.11.11
You don't have to write the filter if you can install the collection community.general. Use the filter community.general.version_sort, e.g. the task below gives the same result
- debug:
msg: "{{ versions | community.general.version_sort }}"

Answer 2

You can use Jinja2 compare version instead of installing a filter plugin
- name: test
set_fact:
max_number: "{{ item }}"
when: max_number |default('0') is version(item, '<')
loop: "{{ master_version }}"
just follow Playbook Test Comparing versions.

Answer 3

Part of what you are looking for is the version test, however, it is built on the idea that a user just wants one comparison. So, you'll need to do some glue to find the "latest" one:
- set_fact:
max_version: >-
{%- set vmax = {} -%}
{%- for v_1 in versions -%}
{%- for v_2 in versions -%}
{%- if v_1 is version(v_2, ">") and v_1 is version(vmax.get("max", "0.0.0"), ">") -%}
{%- set _ = vmax.update({"max": v_1}) -%}
{%- endif -%}
{%- endfor -%}
{%- endfor -%}
{{ vmax.max }}
(I don't pretend that's the optimal solution, as it is very likely comparing versions against each other more than once, but it should work fine for small version lists)

Answer 4

I had a similar use case where I had a version and needed to obtain the previous version from a list of versions.
---
- name: previous_version_filter
hosts: localhost
gather_facts: false
vars:
versions:
- "21.7.1"
- "21.13.0"
- "21.7.2"
- "21.13.1"
- "21.8.0"
- "21.7.0"
version: "21.13.0"
newer_versions: []
tasks:
- name: Create newer_versions list
set_fact:
newer_versions: "{{ newer_versions + [item] }}"
when: item is version(version, '>')
loop: "{{ versions }}"
- name: Create previous_versions list
set_fact:
previous_versions: "{{ versions | difference(newer_versions) | difference([ version ]) }}"
- name: Obtain previous_version
set_fact:
previous_version: "{{ item }}"
when: previous_version | default('0') is version(item, '<')
loop: "{{ previous_versions }}"
- debug:
msg: "{{ previous_version }}"