offline mode still calling ansible-galaxy

[MarkusTeufelberger]

Summary

No matter if specified on the command line or in the config file, ansible-lint tries to call ansible-galaxy

Issue Type

• Bug Report

Ansible and Ansible Lint details

ansible --version
ansible [core 2.12.3]
  config file = /my/custom/path/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = ['/home/myusername/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /usr/local/lib/python3.8/dist-packages/ansible
  ansible collection location = /my/custom/path/collections
  executable location = /usr/local/bin/ansible
  python version = 3.8.6 (default, Oct  6 2020, 04:02:53) [GCC 5.4.0 20160609]
  jinja version = 2.10
  libyaml = True


ansible-lint --version
WARNING: PATH altered to include /usr/bin
ansible-lint 6.0.2 using ansible 2.12.3

• ansible installation method: pip
• ansible-lint installation method: pip

OS / ENVIRONMENT

Ubuntu 18.04 with Python 3.8

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

No matter if called without any config file (the actual one has a .yml ending to make it easier for pre-commit...)

ansible-lint -v --offline
WARNING: PATH altered to include /usr/bin
INFO     Running ansible-galaxy collection install -vr requirements.yml -p /home/myusername/.cache/ansible-compat/26acd4/collections
^C

or with the config file, containing offline: true

ansible-lint -v -c .ansible-lint.yml
WARNING: PATH altered to include /usr/bin
INFO     Running ansible-galaxy collection install -vr requirements.yml -p /home/myusername/.cache/ansible-compat/26acd4/collections
^C

In both cases ansible-lint calls out to ansible-galaxy collection install which is definitely not what it should do. Collections are managed by me and I don't want the linter to change anything on disk. I also want to be very explicit about which collections are installed, the above command will automatically also install (unpinned!) dependencies of collections for example. Lastly, this is the wrong path to install collections to or look for them, as you can see in the output of ansible --version above. Collections are vendored in the folder and this is also specified in the ansible.cfg right there.

Desired Behavior

No calls to ansible-galaxy (and no internet communication at all actually) when specifying --offline.

Actual Behavior

See above, apparently it tries to install collections to some ~/.cache folder that can't be set using the config file of ansible-lint (https://ansible-lint.readthedocs.io/en/latest/configuring/) and that shouldn't happen anyways.

[MarkusTeufelberger]

Looking a bit further this seems to have been ripped out together with the prerun library. I assume that --offline is a complete no-op in ansible-lint v6 and broken since that major version was released. There don't seem to be tests for that feature.

[MarkusTeufelberger]

Even further digging:

The issue seems to be in a different repository alltogether:

https://github.com/ansible/ansible-compat/blob/2140084a6926b6eb911a5ab962e7f0164915620d/src/ansible_compat/runtime.py#L309

(called in

ansible-lint/src/ansiblelint/app.py

Line 209 in 61ed3ea

app.runtime.prepare_environment()

)

As soon as a file named requirements.yml exists, ansible-compat will exec any binary on PATHnamed ansible-galaxy, no matter what. I don't see an obvious way how/if the offline option is even propagated that far into the whole system. It doesn't seem to make it into the Runtime class though and I'm also not so sure how to then get it to use the correct path with the already installed collections on disk in there (since isolated = True is being set there).

[dfelton]

commenting merely to subscribe this this individual issue.

EDIT: For what it is worth, as this may help others until this is resolved:

My workaround was to merely rename requirements.yml to .requirements.yml. This will prevent ansible-lint from having ansible-galaxy automatically install dependencies. When appropriate, dependencies can still be installed by executing ansible-galaxy install -r .requirements.yml

[MarkusTeufelberger]

Apparently this was broken on purpose here: ansible/ansible-compat#37

[nre-ableton]

If that is the case, then I would argue that the --offline argument should be removed altogether, rather than giving users a false impression that it works.

[MarkusTeufelberger]

I'd rather see it fixed, it is a non-starter for a linter to access resources on some foreign host upon every single invocation.

[nre-ableton]

Same here, but I have a feeling that the maintainers are not interested in keeping this feature around, sadly.

[MarkusTeufelberger]

Well, https://github.com/ansible/ansible-compat is (theoretically?) maintained by IBM/Red Hat, not the Ansible community, even though the license file in there says otherwise? It is a bit confusing which functionality should go where, but all in all this is something that needs to be fixed as it also currently breaks my CI runs if I don't apply workarounds AND it also will cause a lot of completely unnecessary traffic for galaxy. Either I break convention by renaming requirements.yml or I break CI by downloading from a web server (which is not as reliable a service as one might hope by the way....)

[ssbarnea]

Offline mode is here to stay, the fact that is does not work well is a bug.