Allow to use task retries without until block

[barlik]

SUMMARY

This change will make task retries work without having an until block. This is useful in situations when you are not interested in the output value and/or you simply want to retry on a failure. This allows you to omit register and until parameters and makes the task easier to read.

ISSUE TYPE

• Feature Pull Request

COMPONENT NAME

core engine

ANSIBLE VERSION

ansible 2.7.0.dev0 (task-retries 7dda294680) last updated 2018/07/22 11:26:54 (GMT +100)
  config file = /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = ['/home/kerny/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /home/kerny/dev/github/ansible/lib/ansible
  executable location = /home/kerny/dev/github/ansible/bin/ansible
  python version = 3.6.6 (default, Jun 27 2018, 13:11:40) [GCC 8.1.1 20180531]

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

The change will allow you to simplify:

    - name: Retry URL call up to five times until we get 200 status code
      uri:
         url: https://httpbin.org/status/200
      register: out
      until: out is successful
      retries: 5

into:

    - name: Retry URL call up to five times until we get 200 status code
      uri:
         url: https://httpbin.org/status/200
      retries: 5

This PR also fixes a small bug (inconsistency) whereby having retries: without a value defaults to 2 retries instead of 3.

[barlik]

Proposal discussion at: ansible/proposals#132

[ansibot]

cc @acozine
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[barlik]

Any update on this?

[samccann]

@dagwieers @bcoca - any update here? looks from the proposal that the idea has merit but haven't seen any action on code reviews here in the PR?

[ghost]

@barlik can you resolve conflicts?

[chrisjohnson00]

Bump

[barlik]

I've rebased the code and fixed merge conflicts. It's been a very long time since I've created this PR so hopefully everything still works.

[ciaby]

Is this PR still open? Would be very handy to have...

[caleb15]

@bcoca can you give this a review please? If you're busy is there a different person who is available to review this?
The issue behind this is in the top 10 issues when sorted by most likes so this feature would be a significant benefit to the community.

[bcoca]

@caleb15 this is not blocked on me, anyone can review, it is on my list .. but i have a long list

[caleb15]

Thanks for the fast response. @mattclay @samccann are one of you available to review? I'd be happy to donate a coffee to you/charity in return.

[samccann]

@caleb15 alas, I can't review python changes. The docs portion LGTM.
The core team meets at 3pm ET on Tuesdays and 11AM ET on Thursdays on #ansible-meeting on IRC. You could try to bring it up there and see if that gets any review/feedback.

[bcoca]

as noted in meeting, we need more tests for current behaviour before we can proceed.
ansible/community#543 (comment)

also some had issues with the current implementation, will leave up to them to add specific comments.