ansible-test --help reports an error if cwd is not a collection path

[rrey]

SUMMARY

The ansible-test --help command will fail with an error if you are not inside a collection path.
It's a bit hard as an introduction :) We should be able to get help from anywhere.

ISSUE TYPE

Feature Idea

COMPONENT NAME

ansible-test

ANSIBLE VERSION

ansible 2.9.0
  config file = None
  configured module search path = ['/Users/remi.rey/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /Users/remi.rey/.virtualenvs/ansible/lib/python3.7/site-packages/ansible
  executable location = /Users/remi.rey/.virtualenvs/ansible/bin/ansible
  python version = 3.7.4 (default, Sep  7 2019, 18:27:02) [Clang 10.0.1 (clang-1001.0.46.4)]

CONFIGURATION

N/A

OS / ENVIRONMENT

N/A

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

$ pip install ansible==2.9
$ ansible-test --help

EXPECTED RESULTS

$ ansible-test --help
usage: ansible-test [-h] COMMAND ...

positional arguments:
  COMMAND
    integration        posix integration tests
    network-integration
                       network integration tests
    windows-integration
                       windows integration tests
    units              unit tests
    sanity             sanity tests
    shell              open an interactive shell
    coverage           code coverage management and reporting
    env                show information about the test environment

optional arguments:
  -h, --help           show this help message and exit

Install the "argcomplete" python package to enable tab completion.

ACTUAL RESULTS

$ ansible-test --help
ERROR: The current working directory must be at or below:

 - an Ansible collection: {...}/ansible_collections/{namespace}/{collection}/

Current working directory: /Users/remi.rey

[ansibot]

Files identified in the description:

• bin/ansible-test

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[webknjaz]

Hey @rrey,
have you tried checking the latest devel version? (from Git)

[rrey]

Hi @webknjaz !

No I didn't.
But I checked out the tag v2.9.0 and tried ansible-test --help and had no error.
maybe the source hacking/env-setup is setting things properly ?

[sivel]

I believe it is still an issue in devel.

If you are outside of the ansible git clone, and not in a collection you get that error.

It is due to the first data_context() call that is done before argument parsing.

[rrey]

I tried to see if I could make a patch but it is beyond my understanding of the code.
The data_context() is made during the argument parsing during the add_environments() call.

[sivel]

I'll need to defer to @mattclay as I am unsure what problems could arise by trying to move the call until after arguments have been parsed.

[mattclay]

The --help output is of course dependent on what options are available. The available options are different depending on the working directory, which is why help is currently unavailable if not in a supported directory.

In order to support help in any directory we first will need to decide what limited subset of help would be useful, to see if it's practical to support it.

[mattclay]

I've changed this issue from a bug to a feature request, since the current behavior is expected.

[kareemhageali]

I noticed that this was unassigned and was wondering if I could work on this. @mattclay

[mattclay]

@kareemhageali Before any work is done on this we need to figure out what help information should be available when outside a collection directory. Do you have any thoughts on that?

[ram-ibm]

Currently we are building the collection, uploading to ansible-galaxy and then installing it on a server before we can run ansible-test. Hoping that this issue will get worked on so we can run it from our local git repository that we develop out of please? Thanks.

[rrey]

@ram-ibm there are ways to work around this issue see the checkout performed here https://github.com/ansible-collections/community.grafana/blob/main/.github/workflows/ansible-test.yml

We force the tree to something expected by Ansible-test.
Other scm provides ways to do the same