Dynamic vars_files inclusion in chapter 5 'Playbook Variables' example broken

[geerlingguy]

The way that vars_files are included probably changed somewhere in the Ansible 2.x lifecycle, rendering the example in the book a bit broken.

The playbook is:

---
- hosts: example
  vars_files:
    - "apache_default.yml"
    - "apache_{{ ansible_os_family }}.yml"
  tasks:
    - service: name={{ apache }} state=running

But that doesn't work.

Instead, we used include_vars in today's livestream, with with_first_found, which worked a bit better. I need to update that example in the book so it works correctly and doesn't mislead readers.

Also ansible_os_family is not CentOS, it's RedHat, on Cent OS (ansible_distribution is CentOS, however).

[geerlingguy]

New example:

---
- hosts: example

  pre_tasks:
    - include_vars: "{{ item }}"
      with_first_found:
        - "apache_{{ ansible_os_family }}.yml"
        - "apache_default.yml"

  tasks:
    - name: Ensure Apache is running.
      service:
        name: "{{ apache_service_name }}"
        state: running

[geerlingguy]

This has been fixed in the manuscript and will be in the next book release version.